Talk:Numerical analysis

Link bugs

Why are some of the free links without apostrophes also closed to editing?

Apparently because there are newlines in them in the source --drj

So now Catastrophic loss of significance is fixed. rchase

Scientific computing

As far as I know, numerical analysis is nowdays called scientific computing. It seems natural to me to use the modern term rather than the old term. Should this article be moved/redirected to scientific computing? --DanielJanzon 15:22, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You don't have to do any "computing" to do numerical analysis. Gershgorin discs fit under numerical analysis, but not necessarely under scientific computing. Loisel 17:00, 3 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Exactly, the theoretcial analysis side of it is separate, though closely related to the computing issue. - Taxman 18:17, Nov 3, 2004 (UTC)

Should scientific computing have it's own article? On my (Swedish) university (of Uppsala) all courses previosuly given in the field numerical analysis are now regarded as courses in "science of computing", which I assumed to be synonymous to the english term scientific computing. Do you guys know what you are talking about or do you just assume that numerical analysis is not fully contained in scientific computing because it doesn't sound like that listening to the term "scientific computing"? A search on Amazon seems (to me) to favor your view. Sorry for the rambling, --DanielJanzon 13:09, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

The words are interchangeable to a degree, but yes I do know what I'm talking about. I'm doing a postdoc at university of Geneva, more or less in scientific computing and numerical analysis. Loisel 14:25, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I can confirm what Loisel says. Numerical analysis refers more to the theoretical side (for instance, the Gershgorin discs mentioned above) and scientific computing more to the practical side (for instance, MPI = Message Passing Interface), but there is a large overlap. Some people indeed use scientific computing in a broad sense to include all of numerical analysis, but other people use numerical analysis in a broad sense to include all of scientic computing. Ask some professors in Uppsala if you don't believe us. -- Jitse Niesen 15:44, 4 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Since "numerical metehods" (NM) redirects to "numerical analysis" (NA) I think "scientific computing" (SC) should do that also. To me, NM and SC seem very close to each other (closer than NA and SC). For instance Hamming writes in "Numerical Methods for Scientist and Engineers" p. 4 "Numerical analysis seems to be the study in depth of a few, somewhat arbitrarily selected, topics and is carried out in a formal mathematical way devoid of relevance to the real world. Numerical methods, on the other hand, try to meet the need for methods to cope with the potentially infinite variety of problems that can arise in practice". A bit frenzied, and maybe not very up-to-date, but I still believe SC should redirect to NA if NM does. Am I right? --DanielJanzon 19:33, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

Yes, I think so too. -- Jitse Niesen 23:11, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

---

I thought numerical analyis was essentially aimed at approximating continous mathematics. This is not obvious in the definition in the article. Someone competent in the matter might consider adding that to the article. --DanielJanzon 19:33, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)

You're right. I think the article is generally not in a very good shape (I worked a bit on it myself, so hopefully nobody will take this personally), but I haven't found the energy to try and improve on it. Perhaps later. -- Jitse Niesen 23:11, 5 Nov 2004 (UTC)