How can I get rid of the error "Expression or statement is incorrect--possibly unbalanced (, {, or [." (New To MatLab)

I am completely new to MatLab. It is a part of a workshop I am taking and I am utterly lost. I was told to literally follow a pre-made program or whatever it is called and just press run. However, It doesn't work at all and I keep getting "Expression or statement is incorrect--possibly unbalanced (, {, or [.". I am completely clueless and It looks exactly like it does on the paper. I am not sure as to what I am doing wrong.

It starts with...

How to create Fig. 3.3 in Matlab. The program below should first be saved as the file distr_shift.m. Then, calling this function in the following way shift=distr_shift(0 .1, 15, 1, 15) will produce Fig. 3.3 a, and also gives the answer that shift of the mean equals precisely 0.1

So i am not sure if I write the shift=distr_shift(0 .1, 15, 1, 15) FIRST and then the function or I just don't even put it in...?

 function [shift,f0;f1;z]=distr_shift(variance,initial_mean,a,b)
    z=linspace(13, 17, 201);
    %we create 201 different values of z that lie between 13 and 17
    f=1/(2*sqrt(variance))*exp(-0.5((z-initial_mean)/(sqrt (variance))).^2);
    f0=f/sum(f);
    r=a*(z-b);
    f1=f0.*exp(r); 
    f1=f1./sum(f1);
    plot (z,f0,z,f1)
    new_mean=sum(f1.*z);
    shift=new_mean-initial_mean;

My result is this.

Error: File: distr_shift.m Line: 1 Column: 19 Expression or statement is incorrect--possibly unbalanced (, {, or [.

I apologize if any of this is confusing, I am not sure how to even explain it and I have no idea what I am doing.

Answer 1

[Star Strider]

The problem are the semicolons ‘;’ in the output vector of the function in the function code:

function [shift,f0;f1;z]=distr_shift(variance,initial_mean,a,b)
                  ^  ^

Replacing them with commas should work:

function [shift,f0,f1,z]=distr_shift(variance,initial_mean,a,b)

Semicolons can be used in a matrix to separate rows, and at the end of a line to suppress output, but nowhere else (at least to the best of my knowledge).