Human beings have ever been on a journey to unfold the mysteries of the world, outward and inward. It is an unquenchable thirst and this journey has been ever since the appearance of life on this planet. Inventing fire, wheel, agriculture, weapons in pre-historics and understanding the universe, life and human genome in our recent times; all have been different attempts to fathom the potential of human mystery. With the advent of computer technology and development in the area of mathematics and statistics solving such mystery got easier and faster. Scientific computing deals with the design and analysis of algorithms for numerically or mathematically solving problems in science and engineering. It is an interdisciplinary domain and encompasses applications in science/engineering, applied mathematics, numerical analysis, and computer science (Figure 1).
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Figure 1: Scientific Computing as an interdisciplinary domain.
(Picture Modified from: http://www.siam.org/students/resources/report.php)
Thus it uses mathematical or statistical methods through a computer to apply them to solve scientific problems, usually by generating mathematical model, numerical analysis or simulations. These computer models and simulations have become an important part of the research repertoire, supplementing or replacing experimentation.
The area has developed a lot in recent years and consists of various applications, few to be listed are: Bioinformatics, Computational Engineering, Computational Physics, Machine Learning, Pattern recognition and so on. This blog will focus on these aspects of Computational Science which is another name for Scientific Computing by some people.
