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https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MATH-1325?page=com.atlassian.jira.plugin.system.issuetabpanels:comment-tabpanel&focusedCommentId=15266679#comment-15266679
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Fran Lattanzio commented on MATH-1325:
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Hmm, OK, that's kind of annoying. We still use SVN(!!!) at work, so I am 
something of a Git noob. I created a fork of Apache Commons Math in my personal 
Git - maybe you could just pull directly from that? Or I assume there is a way 
to easily generate a patch file between the ACM master and my fork. My fork is 
here:
https://github.com/syenkoc/commons-math

In any case, Git issues notwithstanding, I have the code to do the multivariate 
finite differencing and will push everything to my fork tonight.



> Improve finite differencing infrastructure
> ------------------------------------------
>
>                 Key: MATH-1325
>                 URL: https://issues.apache.org/jira/browse/MATH-1325
>             Project: Commons Math
>          Issue Type: New Feature
>            Reporter: Fran Lattanzio
>            Priority: Minor
>
> The existing finite difference framework in commons math is a limiting 
> because it accepts only fixed bandwidth parameters. Furthermore, the finite 
> difference coefficients/descriptions are not exposed to the user in any 
> reasonable fashion (e.g. a user doing a numerical ODE solve probably wants to 
> just grab suitable coefficients from somewhere). 
> Conceptually, I think the work of finite difference can be broadly divided 
> into three tasks:
> 1. Generation of finite difference coefficients. Again, one should be able to 
> do this and get the results outside of the context of taking an actual 
> derivative. Ideally, we could generate coefficients for any flavor (forward, 
> central, backward) and order.
> 2. Selection of the bandwidth. This is, to be honest, the trickiest part of 
> computing a numerical derivative. There is some "art" to picking a proper 
> bandwidth that will generate an accurate numerical derivative - there are two 
> competing sources of error (roundoff, due to the finite representation of 
> floating points; and truncation, due to the inherent nature of finite 
> differences). Ideally, we want to pick a bandwidth that will minimize the 
> *total* error.
> 3. Actually computing the finite difference derivative estimate. This is 
> really easy once you have 1. and 2.
> 4. Extend 1-3 to include support for multivariate finite differences.



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