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The Verification of an Analytical Solution: An Important Engineering Lesson
Author(s) -
Ribando Robert J.,
Weeller Edward A.
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
journal of engineering education
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 3.896
H-Index - 108
eISSN - 2168-9830
pISSN - 1069-4730
DOI - 10.1002/j.2168-9830.1999.tb00448.x
Subject(s) - scrutiny , skepticism , contrast (vision) , computer science , mathematics education , mathematics , calculus (dental) , artificial intelligence , epistemology , philosophy , political science , law , medicine , dentistry
Too often, as long as they “match the answer book,” results based on analytical methods are not subjected to much scrutiny. In contrast, computational results and those based on physical measurements are nearly always met with skepticism. Here we show an example from radiation heat transfer in which an exact analytical solution, when reduced to numbers in the generally‐practiced manner, gives a patently wrong answer. Efforts to verify a new computational algorithm brought this long‐standing error to light.