The economics of developing high quality software. Human factors in the development of numerical software. The measurement of accuracy and reliability for problem classes that include unsolvable problems. Accuracy control in solving differential equations and for basic numerical algorithms. Rationale Numerical software is central to our computerized society, it is used to design airplanes and bridges, to operate manufacturing lines, to control power plants and refineries, to analyze future options for financial markets and the economy.
Numerical software has two characteristics that distinguish it from general software.
First, much of it is built upon a long established foundation of mathematical and computational knowledge. Second, it routinely solves problems of types where it is known that these cannot be generally reliable solution algorithms. Another characteristic of numerical software of a less fundamental, but still disturbing nature, is that much of it uses algorithms that are known to be neither fast nor accurate nor reliable. This measures the quality of the solution. Since achieving a prescribed accuracy is rarely easy in numerical computations, the importance of this component of quality is often under weighted.