Discrete modelling

Discrete modelling is the

discrete Discrete may refer to: *Discrete particle or quantum in physics, for example in quantum theory *Discrete device, an electronic component with just one circuit element, either passive or active, other than an integrated circuit *Discrete group, a ...

analogue of

continuous modelling Continuous modelling is the mathematical practice of applying a model to continuous data (data which has a potentially infinite number, and divisibility, of attributes). They often use differential equations and are converse to discrete modelling ...

. In discrete modelling, formulae are fit to

data In the pursuit of knowledge, data (; ) is a collection of discrete values that convey information, describing quantity, quality, fact, statistics, other basic units of meaning, or simply sequences of symbols that may be further interpret ...

—data that could potentially take on only a

countable In mathematics, a set is countable if either it is finite or it can be made in one to one correspondence with the set of natural numbers. Equivalently, a set is ''countable'' if there exists an injective function from it into the natural number ...

set of values, such as the

integer An integer is the number zero (), a positive natural number (, , , etc.) or a negative integer with a minus sign ( −1, −2, −3, etc.). The negative numbers are the additive inverses of the corresponding positive numbers. In the language ...

s, and which are not infinitely divisible. A common method in this form of modelling is to use

recurrence relation In mathematics, a recurrence relation is an equation according to which the nth term of a sequence of numbers is equal to some combination of the previous terms. Often, only k previous terms of the sequence appear in the equation, for a paramete ...

s. {{Mathapplied-stub Applied mathematics