Errata for the book: An Introduction to Numerical Computation

Wen
c Shen. All rights reserved.
The changes are marked with red. Typos will be added here as they get discovered.
Please let me know if you shall find any typos by email: wxs27@psu.edu

• On page 5: 9 lines from the bottom, we should have 2128 ≈ 3.4 × 1038 .

• On page 82: 3rd last line, should be: ”... In the end, m + 1 will be exactly the order of
the method.

• On page 84: The line before equation (4.7.22), at the end of the line, it should be n = 1
instead of N = 1.

• On page 85: In the table 4.1 on the top of the page, the up-left corner should be n + 1
instead of n.

• On page 103: line 9, the equation should be

g 0 (x) = −2e−2x (x − 1) + e−2x + 1.

• On page 144, second line, it should be

x1 = (0.3, 1.28, 1.768)

• On page 144, the third line should begin with

x2 = · · ·

instead of x2 = · · ·.

• On page 148: After SOR iterations, in the 4th equation a w is missing in front of b.
The correct equation should be

xk+1 = (D + wL)−1 wb + (D + wL)−1 [(1 − w)D − wU ]xk = ySOR + MSOR xk .

Consequently, the equation that follows needs modification as well

ySOR = (D + wL)−1 wb.

• On page 150: For Theorem 7.2, it should be added that the convergence of SOR also
requires the A matrix to be positive definite.

• On page 163: In the middle of the page, the equation for S should be

S(t) = ā + b̄t.

And 5 lines below, the line should begin with: “ that S(t) best fits ...”

1
• On page 166: About one third down the page, it should be:
Rb
bi a gi (x)f (x) dx
ai = = Rb .
cii 2
a (gi (x)) dx

The cii is replacing aii .

• On page 185: In the middle of the page, in Heun’s method, for k = 1, the second
equation for computing K2 , one should have t2 instead of t1 in the formula.

• On page 228: I lost an 2h in front of u0 in (10.3.31). Thus, the second equation in

(10.3.31) should be
u−1 = u1 − 2hu0 − 2hγ
The following equation should be

(u1 − 2hu0 − 2hγ) − 2u0 + u1 = h2 f (x0 )

Equation (10.3.32) should be

−2(h + 1)u0 + 2u1 = h2 f (x0 ) + 2hγ

and consequently, (10.3.33) should be

h2 f (x0 ) + 2hγ
     
−2(h + 1) 2 u0

 1 −2 1  
  u1  
  h2 f (x1 ) 

 .. .. ..  
· ..  
= .. 
.

 . . .   .   . 
  2
1 −2 1   uN −2   h f (xN −2 )
   
 
1 −2 uN −1 h2 f (xN −1 ) − b

• On page 235, in the middle of the page, the D matrix should be

 
−4 1 0
D =  1 −4 1  ...
 
0 1 −4

• On page 237, in the last equation, the vector ~b for N = 5 should have length 4 × 4 = 16.
The two middle blocks contain an extra 0, which should be removed.

• On page 247, in the equation for θ-scheme on line 4, there denominators for the terms
on the righthand side should be ∆x2 , i.e., without the factor 2.