Introduction to MATLAB As seen in ENGS 20

Dividing polynomials is known in MATLAB as deconvolving.

Suppose you wanted to divide the polynomial \(p_1(x) = 2x^3 + 9x^2 + 7x -6\) by the polynomial \(p_2(x) = x+3\text{.}\) Do you remember how to do such a polynomial division by hand?

Don’t worry, MATLAB can do all of this for you. Here is how:

>> p1 = [2 9 7 -6];
>> p2 = [1 3];
>> [q r] = deconv(p1, p2)

q =
    2   3  -2

r =
    0   0   0   0

The deconv function returns two arguments: \(q\) is a row vector of coefficients of the polynomial that results from the division and \(r\) is a row vector of coefficients of the polynomial remainder (in the above example there is no remainder).