Main Page | See live article | Alphabetical index A well-posed problem is, roughly speaking, a numerical problem whose solution changes by only a small amount if its data are changed by a small amount. A measure of well-posedness is the condition. If a problem is well-posed, then it stands a good chance of solution on a computer using a stable algorithm. If it's not well-posed, it needs to be re-formulated for numerical treatment. The concept of well-posedness is related to that of continuity. In fact, if the problem can be thought of as a function mapping its data, which is an -tuple of real numbers, into its solution, an -tuple of real numbers, then well-posedness of the problem is the continuity of the function. See also Numerical analysis, condition number This article is from Wikipedia. All text is available under the terms of the GNU Free Documentation License.