News for hackers. Stuff that matters.

A comment on What are Differential Equations and how do they work?. Parent comment

Re:What are Differential Equations and how do they work? by dreamcompiler on Sunday October 04, 2020 @05:04PM (#24682238)
If your DEs are linear, you can use Laplace transforms to find an exact solution. This is much simpler than inexact numerical methods.
[ Parent | on HN ]
Re:What are Differential Equations and how do they work? by btrettel on Sunday October 04, 2020 @06:54PM (#24682905)
Not quite. The Laplace transform only works for constant coefficient linear equations as far as I'm aware. And it is inappropriate for many boundary value problems, because it solves a problem over a domain from 0 to infinity when that might not be what you want.

With this being said, I'm a big fan of integral transforms in general (Fourier and Laplace particularly) and have used them many times to solve both ODEs and PDEs.

[ Parent | on HN ]