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Re: Re: odd behavior of NDSolve



> Richard Finley wrote:
> 
> > Hi Selwyn,
> >
> > Actually, I don't believe there is any mystery behind the behavior.
> > Since it is a numerical integration routine, it is subject to
> > accumulated error depending on step size, maximum number of steps,
> > etc...and it just so happens in this case that it becomes unstable
> > around 12.03.
>
> Accumulated error is something I'm quite familiar with, but this
> behavior is not about accumulated error. NDSolve is taking ONE giant
> step, right past the interesting part of the solution when tmax >
> 12.03. As Paul Abbott correctly pointed out, the real cause is the
> default value of Infinity for MaxStepSize.  (Seems to me that a more
> sensible default for MaxStepSize might be something like tmax/10.)
> 
> Selwyn

If you want the maximum step size to be tmax/10, you could use
MaxRelativeStepSize -> 1/10 so that the maximum step size will be
limited to tmax/10 for any value of tmax.  If you wish you could set
this to be the default value of MaxRelativeStepSize.

Dave Withoff
Wolfram Research



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