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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.
This method takes advantage of linear combinations of point values to construct finite difference coefficients that describe derivatives of the function. For example, the second-order central difference approximation to the first derivative is given by:
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 (+) + (() +).
For arbitrary stencil points and any derivative of order < up to one less than the number of stencil points, the finite difference coefficients can be obtained by solving the linear equations [6] ( s 1 0 ⋯ s N 0 ⋮ ⋱ ⋮ s 1 N − 1 ⋯ s N N − 1 ) ( a 1 ⋮ a N ) = d !
An illustration of the five-point stencil in one and two dimensions (top, and bottom, respectively). In numerical analysis, given a square grid in one or two dimensions, the five-point stencil of a point in the grid is a stencil made up of the point itself together with its four "neighbors".
The simplest method is to use finite difference approximations. A simple two-point estimation is to compute the slope of a nearby secant line through the points (x, f(x)) and (x + h, f(x + h)). [1] Choosing a small number h, h represents a small change in x, and it can be either positive or negative.
Nonstandard finite difference schemes is a general set of methods in numerical analysis that gives numerical solutions to differential equations by constructing a discrete model. The general rules for such schemes are not precisely known. [1] [2]
The Crank–Nicolson stencil for a 1D problem. The Crank–Nicolson method is based on the trapezoidal rule, giving second-order convergence in time.For linear equations, the trapezoidal rule is equivalent to the implicit midpoint method [citation needed] —the simplest example of a Gauss–Legendre implicit Runge–Kutta method—which also has the property of being a geometric integrator.