ABSTRACT
Many operations in mathematical analysis can be identified as belonging to one of two types: analytical or numerical. In spite of the simplicity of most numerical methods, it is somewhat difficult to give a specific definition for the term numerical method. This chapter discusses the characteristics, advantages, and disadvantages of numerical methods and provides an example to illustrate these characteristics. Numerical methods can be used to solve a variety of quantitative problems faced by engineers. For many engineering problems, an analytical solution is either impossible or the cost or effort of performing an analytical solution would be prohibitive. When performing mathematical operations as a part of the solution of a numerical analysis, it is important to consider the number of significant digits in the solution. Non-numerical errors include modeling errors, blunders and mistakes, and uncertainty in information and data. Blunders and gross mistakes can generally be attributed to human errors.
