TY - JOUR AB - Purpose– The aim of this paper is to highlight the educational value of algebraic numerical methods with respect to traditional numerical techniques based on differential formulation.Design/methodology/approach– Algebraic formulations of electromagnetic fields are gaining a new interest in the research community. One common characteristic of these methods is that they impose field equations, for instance charge or mass conservation, directly in algebraic form as a sum of partial contributes, without using differential operators like the divergence one. This feature leads directly to a system of linear equations without requiring any intermediate differential formulation as in finite element method. In addition, these systems of linear equations can be efficiently expressed as a product of matrices related to problem topology and material characteristics.Findings– Owing to these features, a MATLAB implementation of these theoretical frameworks is particularly efficient and simple and can be used by electrical engineering students which, even if with a basic mathematical background, have a good practice with network theory and its computer implementation. Following this way of thinking, a MATLAB based environment has been created and here it is presented and discussed.Originality/value– The implementation of the algebraic formulation can be done by using very basic mathematical tools, therefore the algebraic method becomes also a good way to introduce the numerical field analysis to undergraduate students. VL - 27 IS - 6 SN - 0332-1649 DO - 10.1108/03321640810905828 UR - https://doi.org/10.1108/03321640810905828 AU - Freschi Fabio AU - Giaccone Luca AU - Repetto Maurizio ED - Mauro Feliziani ED - Alessandro Salvini ED - Alessandro Toscano ED - Lucio Vegni PY - 2008 Y1 - 2008/01/01 TI - Educational value of the algebraic numerical methods in electromagnetism T2 - COMPEL - The international journal for computation and mathematics in electrical and electronic engineering PB - Emerald Group Publishing Limited SP - 1343 EP - 1357 Y2 - 2024/09/19 ER -