In this section, we're going to go through the set of mathematical and other operations that are contained inside the Mat class itself. Even though there is no general pattern of usage for the functions in the Mat class, most of them are related to creating a new matrix, whether it is using an existing one or from scratch. So, let's start.
During the course of the book, the words image, matrix, the Mat class, and so on will be used interchangeably, and they all mean the same thing, unless explicitly stated. Take this chance to get used to the idea of thinking about images in terms of matrices, just like a computer vision expert would do.