Numerical Analysis
Numerical analysis provides a variety of techniques to compute approximations to mathematical numerical values. Errors arise from a trade-off between efficiency and precision, which is limited anyway, since (using floating-point arithmetic) only some rational numbers can be represented exactly. The discrepancy between the exact mathematical value and the computed value is called the approximation error.
Read more about this topic: Error
Famous quotes containing the words numerical and/or analysis:
“The terrible tabulation of the French statists brings every piece of whim and humor to be reducible also to exact numerical ratios. If one man in twenty thousand, or in thirty thousand, eats shoes, or marries his grandmother, then, in every twenty thousand, or thirty thousand, is found one man who eats shoes, or marries his grandmother.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“Ask anyone committed to Marxist analysis how many angels on the head of a pin, and you will be asked in return to never mind the angels, tell me who controls the production of pins.”
—Joan Didion (b. 1934)