This PDF explains the hoops you have to go thru to get MATLAB on your own machine. Here are some tutorials to get you started from mathworks:
http://www.mathworks.com/help/pdf_doc/matlab/getstart.pdf
http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/index.html
http://www.mathworks.com/help/matlab/examples/index.html (bunch of videos)
For a very quick start, here is a short tutorial on the basics:
http://www.math.utah.edu/lab/ms/matlab/matlab.html
If you really want to learn Matlab, MIT has put up the lecture notes for a 4-week course:
http://ocw.mit.edu/courses/electrical-engineering-and-computer-science/6-094-introduction-to-matlab-january-iap-2010/index.htm
The first chapter of Moler’s book also has an introduction. I suggest that you check out the floating point section in particular.
