Here are some resources to help you come up to speed in MATLAB.

===Tutorials===

A [http://nr.com/CS395T/MatlabPrimerForCS395T.pdf primer written a few years ago for this course] is a good place to start. This begins with simple concepts, then moves on to some more advanced stuff that I'll use in lectures. However, it is by no means complete.

MathWorks' own [http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/index.html?/access/helpdesk/help/techdoc/learn_matlab/bqr_2pl.html= getting started documentation] is also not a bad place to start. It has some videos, if you like that kind of thing.

The University of Cambridge Engineering Department has a good [http://www-h.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/programs/matlab.html list of tutorial links]. Especially nice, once you understand the basics, is their own [http://www-h.eng.cam.ac.uk/help/tpl/programs/Matlab/tricks.html tutorial on vectorization tricks].

The acknowledged world expert on MATLAB vectorization tricks is Peter J. Acklam of the University of Oslo. Links are on his [http://home.online.no/~pjacklam/matlab/doc/mtt/index.html MATLAB page]. His 30-page [http://home.online.no/~pjacklam/matlab/doc/mtt/doc/archive/2000-05-05/mtt.pdf.gz 2000 tutorial] is quick to read, while his 63-page [http://nr.com/CS395T/AcklamMatlabTricks.pdf 2003 version] is more complete.

If you are using MATLAB on a Windows machine, then "live" notebooks within Microsoft Word ("M-books") are pretty cool. The above-listed "primer written for this course" was done as an M-book, then printed to a PDF file.

Finally, you might want to interface MATLAB to Numerical Recipes (or any other C++ programs), both for versatility and (sometimes) hugely increased speed. A [http://www.nr.com/nr3_matlab.html complete tutorial on this] is on the NR web site.

===Cheat Sheets===

Here are a couple of Matlab cheatsheets, useful for looking up the basic commands for someone new to the language:

[http://www.karenkopecky.net/Teaching/eco613614/Matlab%20Resources/MatlabCheatSheet.pdf Basic commands cheat sheet]

For people familiar with either MATLAB or Python and interested in learning the other, here are some lists of equivalent commands between the two: 

[http://mathesaurus.sourceforge.net/matlab-numpy.html Matlab/Octave and Python]

[http://wiki.scipy.org/NumPy_for_Matlab_Users NumPy for Matlab Users]