Scientific Computing (numerical analysis)

Definition

The term scientific computing differs from computer science because scientific computing tackles continuous problem settings, as opposed to discrete. This means quantities like time, distance, velocity, temperature, density, etc...

Most problems in continuous mathematics cannot be solved exactly, and use an iterative process to converge to a solution that is "close enough" to the real solution (in practical applications, since we cannot iterate forever).

Thus, one of the most important aspects of scientific computing is speed, how quickly we can iterate and converge to find an accurate approximate solution.