Rich Harang

If you had trouble seeing the point of probability generating functions -- or are just looking for a fun (and useful) mathematical diversion -- Herbert S. Wilf at the University of Pennsylvania mathematics department has posted the entire second edition of "Generating Functionology" online.  You can download it here.

It's a light read, and definitely worth a day or two invested in it, even if you don't dig too deeply into it.

Here's a guide to get you started with Matlab.  It covers enough that you can start using it for basic computations.

If you do not have any programming experience at all, it may be helpful to read through these course notes, or take a look at this introductory guide (courtesy of Kermit Sigmon at the University of Florida).  Note that these both use older versions of Matlab, so there are some minor differences in functions; pay more attention to the idea of setting up program flow.