title: advantages of row vs column data representation in MATLAB
body: <p>I am writing a MATLAB toolbox and I need to store a moderately large number of vector-valued data points (10^4 to 10^5).
  I can store these data points in a D-by-N matrix or a N-by-D matrix, where D is the dimensionality of the data and N the total number of data points.</p>
  
  <p>Many MATLAB functions assume a N-by-D representation (e.g., <code>cov</code>, <code>kmeans</code>), so I assume that it is the default representation and I would follow it.</p>
  
  <p><strong>Is there <em>any</em> reason to favour the D-by-N representation in MATLAB instead?</strong></p>
  
  <p>I am asking because I have seen quite a number of people using the D-by-N representation in MATLAB.</p>