Continuous modelling

{{Short description|Mathematical practice}}

{{One source|date=August 2024}}

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{{cite book|author=Dennis G. Zill|title=A First Course in Differential Equations with Modeling Applications|url=https://books.google.com/books?id=pasKAAAAQBAJ&q=%22ordinary+differential%22|date=15 March 2012|publisher=Cengage Learning|isbn=978-1-285-40110-2}} and are converse to discrete modelling.

Modelling is generally broken down into several steps:

• Making assumptions about the data: The modeller decides what is influencing the data and what can be safely ignored.
• Making equations to fit the assumptions.
• Solving the equations.
• Verifying the results: Various statistical tests are applied to the data and the model and compared.
• If the model passes the verification progress, putting it into practice.
• If the model fails the verification progress, altering it and subjecting it again to verification; if it persists in fitting the data more poorly than a competing model, it is abandoned.