Finite Difference Methods - Derivative Approximation

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8 pointsshogunmike3 comments

I hope no one was trying to learn from that. FD can be tough to handle for people not mathematically trained.

Heat equation? Why? Any second order differential equation would suffice since there is no real example with materials, temperature, properties, boundary conditions, etc. Mine as well just been reading http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finite_difference_method

I'll probably modify the article to include a list of suggested prerequisites and change the heat equation to "diffusion equation", as that is less physically biased.

My real goal is for somebody with a background in mathematics (but no programming) to learn how to program FD, rather than just learn the theory. This is not really made clear by the current article and I will be adding an overview.

Thanks for the feedback though - I'd welcome any more, obviously I want the article(s) to be accessible to as many people as possible!

I would suggest adding more visual aids, especially when talking about grid spacing/nodes. I'll try to keep up with it and suggest more things.

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