Computing

Numerical Methods ◾ 171

only come from some bounded domain. Of course, from a computational

standpoint, these restrictions can only make the problem more dicult.

e calculation of an optimal solution is not, by any means, restricted

to nding the zeroes of functions or their derivatives. Many problems,

e.g.,modeling and the optimization of the ow of messages on the Internet,

simply do not have a closed-form functional representation. In such cases,

various approximation schemes may be used, including self-adaptive ones,

which may adjust the model if the predicted behavior is not in line with the

actual one being observed.

Numerical analysis includes other classes of computational methods.

For example, given a set of data points, ho ...