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A finite difference is a mathematical expression of the form f (x + b) − f (x + a).If a finite difference is divided by b − a, one gets a difference quotient.The approximation of derivatives by finite differences plays a central role in finite difference methods for the numerical solution of differential equations, especially boundary value problems.
In this method, the basic shape function is modified to obtain the upwinding effect. This method is an extension of Runge–Kutta discontinuous for a convection-diffusion equation. For time-dependent equations, a different kind of approach is followed. The finite difference scheme has an equivalent in the finite element method (Galerkin method ...
For example, consider the ordinary differential equation ′ = + The Euler method for solving this equation uses the finite difference quotient (+) ′ to approximate the differential equation by first substituting it for u'(x) then applying a little algebra (multiplying both sides by h, and then adding u(x) to both sides) to get (+) + (() +).
Phase portrait showing saddle-node bifurcation. Bifurcation theory is the mathematical study of changes in the qualitative or topological structure of a given family of curves, such as the integral curves of a family of vector fields, and the solutions of a family of differential equations.
An inverse problem in science is the process of calculating from a set of observations the causal factors that produced them: for example, calculating an image in X-ray computed tomography, source reconstruction in acoustics, or calculating the density of the Earth from measurements of its gravity field.
The small divisor problem arises when the difference is small, causing the perturbative correction to "blow up", becoming as large or maybe larger than the zeroth order term. This situation signals a breakdown of perturbation theory: It stops working at this point, and cannot be expanded or summed any further.
The three-body problem is a special case of the n-body problem, which describes how n objects move under one of the physical forces, such as gravity. These problems have a global analytical solution in the form of a convergent power series, as was proven by Karl F. Sundman for n = 3 and by Qiudong Wang for n > 3 (see n-body problem for details
Informally, the Kolmogorov forward equation addresses the following problem. We have information about the state x of the system at time t (namely a probability distribution p t ( x ) {\displaystyle p_{t}(x)} ); we want to know the probability distribution of the state at a later time s > t {\displaystyle s>t} .