Edit page | Page history | Printable version

Discrete time model

(Science: epidemiology) a model in which the system jumps from one state to the next at fixed intervals or timesteps. These difference models are simple to understand but often difficult to analyse; contrast continuous time models.

The parameters in such a model refer to the amount of change over the finite timestep; they are sometimes referred to as finite rates.

in a (rather precise) sense, a differential equation is what you eventually get from a difference equation when you let the timestep get smaller and smaller and smaller.