Practice question · Multiple choice
Scientific code is often written by researchers rather than software engineers, and produces published results. Which practice pays off most for that kind of code?
Hints
- The research problem has no known answer. Ask what does.
- Which practice would have caught a sign error in the physics?
Show the answer
A. Testing against known analytic cases with closed-form answers
Why
You cannot check the answer you are looking for, so you check the cases where the answer is known, a simplified geometry, a limiting case, a conserved quantity. Convergence studies do the same job. Retracted papers traced to spreadsheet and indexing errors are what the practice is defending against.
Practise Program Design for Scientific or Engineering Tasks
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