Basic mathematical operations:

All the basic mathematical operations can be executed on symbolic expressions and variables (example, add, raise to a power, multiply, subtract, divide, etc.).

Here are some illustrations:

>> c/b

ans =

x^2

>> b^3

ans =

x^6

>> c*b

ans =

x^6

>> b + sym('4*x^2')

ans =

5*x^2

It can be view from the last illustration that MATLAB will collect like words in such expressions, adding the x₂ and 4x₂ to answer in 5x₂.

The below generates a symbolic expression by passing a string, but the words are not automatically collected:

>> sym('z^3 + 2*z^3')

ans =

z^3   2*z^3