Jump to content

Numerical instability

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
This is an old revision of this page, as edited by Omicronpersei8 (talk | contribs) at 13:02, 9 August 2006. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

You must add a |reason= parameter to this Cleanup template โ€“ replace it with {{Cleanup|August 2006|reason=<Fill reason here>}}, or remove the Cleanup template.
Numerical instability deals with an unexpected phenomenon which arises from the numerical solution of ordinary or partial differential equations. The usual notion of instability includes concepts such as fickleness, unreliability, and oversensitivity. If a computation is numerically unstable it gives inaccurate results. A major source of numerical instability results from a multiplicative magnification effect of small errors on the numerical results. Detailed analysis of difference schemes are used to determine, in advance, whether a proposed solution will give stable computational results.

See also