Reply
Mon 14 Mar, 2005 09:21 pm
I heard that differential equations are really hard to solve. Does this only apply to certain forms of Differential equations? It seems fairly simple at least for differential equations describing polynomial equations that you could quite easily find the average slope of all of the dy/dx values between 0 and x and then multiply that average by x to get the y value, but that could just be random nonsense from a student not even into pre-calc yet.
I was never strong in math (except for counting beans), but we used differential calculus in business class to control inventory at the most efficient level. Somebody with math skills is gonna have to help you with your specific q's.
Quote:I heard that differential equations are really hard to solve. Does this only apply to certain forms of Differential equations? It seems fairly simple at least for differential equations describing polynomial equations that you could quite easily find the average slope of all of the dy/dx values between 0 and x and then multiply that average by x to get the y value, but that could just be random nonsense from a student not even into pre-calc yet.
Differential equations can be extremely easy or extremely difficult to solve depending on their form. Higher 'order' differential equations are harder to solve. There are a lot of adjectives used to classify them into different groups. There are almost as many ways to go about solving them. The problems that you will solve in an introductory differential equations class will be of specific types which the procedures you learn will work on. Comparatively, I think it is an easier class than Calcl III which you will take before it.
The moderately complex ones go like
g(x,y) is a function (often a polynominal to keep it easy) such that
d/dx g(x,y) + d^2/dxdy g(x,y) + d^3/dy^3 g(x,y) = ax^3 + bx^2 + cxy^2 + dy^3 = 0
for some constants a, b, c, and d as an example
Define g(x,y)
What are differential equations used for? I find that eating potato chips on the couch are a much more useful use of my time.
Jazzfreak13 wrote:What are differential equations used for? I find that eating potato chips on the couch are a much more useful use of my time.
If other people who lived before you had not worked with differential equations, you would probably not have the couch, the chips, the PC you are writing this on, and might have died of some disease at a point earlier in your life. Does it take a differential equation to build a couch? No, but building a factory to mass produce them, not to mention factories to mass produce the raw materials, is probably based on various things that at one time involved calculus.
Stumble It!
Tweet This
Bookmark on Delicious
Share on Facebook
Share on MySpace