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Numerical methods for ordinary differential equations are methods used to find numerical approximations to the solutions of ordinary differential equations (ODEs). Their use is also known as "numerical integration", although this term can also refer to the computation of integrals. Many differential equations cannot be solved exactly.
Best rational approximants for π (green circle), e (blue diamond), ϕ (pink oblong), (√3)/2 (grey hexagon), 1/√2 (red octagon) and 1/√3 (orange triangle) calculated from their continued fraction expansions, plotted as slopes y/x with errors from their true values (black dashes)
A quadrature rule is an approximation of the definite integral of a function, usually stated as a weighted sum of function values at specified points within the domain of integration. Numerical integration methods can generally be described as combining evaluations of the integrand to get an approximation to the integral.
Suppose we have a continuous differential equation ′ = (,), =, and we wish to compute an approximation of the true solution () at discrete time steps ,, …,.For simplicity, assume the time steps are equally spaced:
When one does not know the exact solution, one may look for the approximation with small residual. Residuals appear in many areas in mathematics, including iterative solvers such as the generalized minimal residual method , which seeks solutions to equations by systematically minimizing the residual.
Stability is a measure of the sensitivity to rounding errors of a given numerical procedure; by contrast, the condition number of a function for a given problem indicates the inherent sensitivity of the function to small perturbations in its input and is independent of the implementation used to solve the problem. [5] [6]
One problem of particular interest is that of approximating a function in a computer mathematical library, using operations that can be performed on the computer or calculator (e.g. addition and multiplication), such that the result is as close to the actual function as possible.