Numerical exploration of numerical constraint satisfaction problems
Date
2003
Authors
Parvataneni, Seshu
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Abstract
One of the problems of conventional numerical computation is rounding error. Interval methods like interval arithmetic and interval constraints automatically compute an estimate of the error for each real number. These methods have proved to be valuable in numerical computation because of their certainty in the results. But problems with conventional numerical analysis performance is the key issue. The only way to get the guarantees of the interval methods accepted, is to offer the guarantees without penalty in performance. An application of a commercially available package NUMERICA, which finds all solutions to nonlinear systems of equations, proves this. However, the package is proprietary. In this thesis, we develop an interval constraint system by composing reusable units of software using the Component Object Model(COM) architecture. Our design of the interval constraint system ensures reusability and interoperability among different programs on the same machine. The programs may have been developed using different programming languages. In addition, we develop a graphical user interface application for the interval constraint system. This is the first system for the interactive exploration of constraint satisfaction problems.