Variations between Division Operations

When performing a normal division and a Element-wise Division on a vector the outputs are different..

a = [1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10];
a = a';

d = 1 / a;
d = 1 ./ a;

In this case since i am dividing 1 against a Column vector the normal one gives me a solution but only evaluates the last segment and the element wise operation works as fine.

Why is the normal division working in this case? should it not prompt me an error? In a more complicated cases it randomly evaluates a certain row in the column vector and it is the only available solution where the rest are given as '0'.

Answer 1

[Matt J]

The operation d=1/a is giving you a least squares solution, d, to the equation

 d*a=1

See the Documentation for MRDIVIDE