On May 3, 4:59 pm, someone <newsbo...@gmail.com> wrote: > On 05/04/2012 12:58 AM, Russ P. wrote: > > > Yeah, I realized that I should rephrase my previous statement to > > something like this: > > > For any *empirical* engineering or scientific work, I'd say that a > > condition number of 1e6 is likely to be unacceptable. > > Still, I don't understand it. Do you have an example of this kind of > work, if it's not FEM? > > > I'd put finite elements into the category of theoretical and numerical > > rather than empirical. Still, a condition number of 1e6 would bother > > me, but maybe that's just me. > > Ok, but I just don't understand what's in the "empirical" category, sorry...
I didn't look it up, but as far as I know, empirical just means based on experiment, which means based on measured data. Unless I am mistaken , a finite element analysis is not based on measured data. Yes, the results can be *compared* with measured data and perhaps calibrated with measured data, but those are not the same thing. I agree with Steven D's comment above, and I will reiterate that a condition number of 1e6 would not inspire confidence in me. If I had a condition number like that, I would look for a better model. But that's just a gut reaction, not a hard scientific rule. -- http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
