Ordinary Differential Equations Exercise 1

Imports


In [1]:
%matplotlib inline
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
import numpy as np
import seaborn as sns
from scipy.integrate import odeint
from IPython.html.widgets import interact, fixed


:0: FutureWarning: IPython widgets are experimental and may change in the future.

Euler's method

Euler's method is the simplest numerical approach for solving a first order ODE numerically. Given the differential equation

$$ \frac{dy}{dx} = f(y(x), x) $$

with the initial condition:

$$ y(x_0)=y_0 $$

Euler's method performs updates using the equations:

$$ y_{n+1} = y_n + h f(y_n,x_n) $$$$ h = x_{n+1} - x_n $$

Write a function solve_euler that implements the Euler method for a 1d ODE and follows the specification described in the docstring:


In [2]:
def solve_euler(derivs, y0, x):
    """Solve a 1d ODE using Euler's method.
    
    Parameters
    ----------
    derivs : function
        The derivative of the diff-eq with the signature deriv(y,x) where
        y and x are floats.
    y0 : float
        The initial condition y[0] = y(x[0]).
    x : np.ndarray, list, tuple
        The array of times at which of solve the diff-eq.
    
    Returns
    -------
    y : np.ndarray
        Array of solutions y[i] = y(x[i])
    """
    h = x[1]-x[0]
    y = np.zeros_like(x)
    y[0] = y0
    for i in range(len(x)-1):
        y[i+1] = y[i] + h*derivs(y[i],x[i])
    return y

In [3]:
assert np.allclose(solve_euler(lambda y, x: 1, 0, [0,1,2]), [0,1,2])

The midpoint method is another numerical method for solving the above differential equation. In general it is more accurate than the Euler method. It uses the update equation:

$$ y_{n+1} = y_n + h f\left(y_n+\frac{h}{2}f(y_n,x_n),x_n+\frac{h}{2}\right) $$

Write a function solve_midpoint that implements the midpoint method for a 1d ODE and follows the specification described in the docstring:


In [4]:
def solve_midpoint(derivs, y0, x):
    """Solve a 1d ODE using the Midpoint method.
    
    Parameters
    ----------
    derivs : function
        The derivative of the diff-eq with the signature deriv(y,x) where y
        and x are floats.
    y0 : float
        The initial condition y[0] = y(x[0]).
    x : np.ndarray, list, tuple
        The array of times at which of solve the diff-eq.
    
    Returns
    -------
    y : np.ndarray
        Array of solutions y[i] = y(x[i])
    """
    h = x[1]-x[0]
    y = np.zeros_like(x)
    y[0] = y0
    for i in range(len(x)-1):
        y[i+1] = y[i] + h*derivs(y[i]+(h/2)*derivs(y[i],x[i]),x[i]+h/2)
    return y

In [5]:
assert np.allclose(solve_midpoint(lambda y, x: 1, 0, [0,1,2]), [0,1,2])

You are now going to solve the following differential equation:

$$ \frac{dy}{dx} = x + 2y $$

which has the analytical solution:

$$ y(x) = 0.25 e^{2x} - 0.5 x - 0.25 $$

First, write a solve_exact function that compute the exact solution and follows the specification described in the docstring:


In [6]:
def solve_exact(x):
    """compute the exact solution to dy/dx = x + 2y.
    
    Parameters
    ----------
    x : np.ndarray
        Array of x values to compute the solution at.
    
    Returns
    -------
    y : np.ndarray
        Array of solutions at y[i] = y(x[i]).
    """
    def function(point):
        return .25*np.exp(2*point) - .5*point - .25
    y = np.array([function(i) for i in x])
    return y

In [7]:
assert np.allclose(solve_exact(np.array([0,1,2])),np.array([0., 1.09726402, 12.39953751]))

In the following cell you are going to solve the above ODE using four different algorithms:

  1. Euler's method
  2. Midpoint method
  3. odeint
  4. Exact

Here are the details:

  • Generate an array of x values with $N=11$ points over the interval $[0,1]$ ($h=0.1$).
  • Define the derivs function for the above differential equation.
  • Using the solve_euler, solve_midpoint, odeint and solve_exact functions to compute the solutions using the 4 approaches.

Visualize the solutions on a sigle figure with two subplots:

  1. Plot the $y(x)$ versus $x$ for each of the 4 approaches.
  2. Plot $\left|y(x)-y_{exact}(x)\right|$ versus $x$ for each of the 3 numerical approaches.

Your visualization should have legends, labeled axes, titles and be customized for beauty and effectiveness.

While your final plot will use $N=10$ points, first try making $N$ larger and smaller to see how that affects the errors of the different approaches.


In [51]:
f, (ax1, ax2) = plt.subplots(2, 1,figsize=(12,8))
ax1.plot(x,y1,label = 'Euler',color='red');
ax1.plot(x,y2,label = 'Midpoint',color='blue');
ax1.plot(x,y3,label = 'Exact',color='black');
ax1.plot(x,y4,label = 'ODE',color='green');
ax1.set_title('Four Differential Methods')
ax1.set_xlabel('x')
ax1.set_ylabel('y')


ax2.plot(x,(abs(y1-y3)),label = 'Euler Difference',color='red');
ax2.plot(x,(abs(y2-y3)),label = 'Midpoint Difference',color='blue');
ax2.plot(x,(abs(newy4-y3)),label = 'ODE Difference',color='green');
ax2.set_title('Error for Each Differential Method');
ax2.set_ylim(-.1,1);

ax2.set_xlabel('x')
ax2.set_ylabel('y')


plt.tight_layout()
ax2.legend();
ax1.legend();


I worked with Hunter, Jessica, and Brett.


In [10]:
assert True # leave this for grading the plots