Numerical analysis, area of mathematics and computer science that creates, analyzes, and implements algorithms for obtaining numerical solutions to problems involving continuous variables. Such problems arise throughout the natural sciences, social sciences, engineering, medicine, and business. Since the mid 20th century, the growth in power and availability of digital computers has led to an increasing use of realistic mathematical models in science and engineering, and numerical analysis of increasing sophistication is needed to solve these more detailed models of the world. The formal academic area of numerical analysis ranges from quite theoretical mathematical studies to computer science issues.
With the increasing availability of computers, the new discipline of scientific computing, or computational science, emerged during the 1980s and 1990s. The discipline combines numerical analysis, symbolic mathematical computations, computer graphics, and other areas of computer science to make it easier to set up, solve, and interpret complicated mathematical models of the real world.
Source:
https://www.britannica.com/science/numerical-analysis
