Reliable Computations

Summary

This chapter has described numerous things that can go wrong when performing numerical computations. You won't encounter most of these difficulties when you solve practical lower-order problems. The problems described here pertain to all computer analysis packages. MATLAB has some of the best algorithms available, and, where possible, notifies you when there are difficulties. The important points to remember are:

• State-space models are, in general, the most reliable models for subsequent computations.
• Scaling model data can improve the accuracy of your results.
• Numerical computing is a tricky business, and virtually all computer tools can fail under certain conditions.

Scaling

References