On Some Perturbation Approaches to Population Dynamics

We show that the Adomian decomposition method, the time--series expansion, the homotopy--perturbation method, and the variational--iteration method completely fail to provide a reasonable description of the dynamics of the simplest prey--predator system

About homotopy perturbation method for solving heat-like and wave-like equations with variable coefficients

We analyze a recent application of homotopy perturbation method to some heat-like and wave-like models and show that its main results are merely the Taylor expansions of exponential and hyperbolic functions. Besides, the authors require more boundary conditions than those already necessary for the solution of the problem by means of power series

Homotopy perturbation method: when infinity equals five

I discuss a recent application of homotopy perturbation method to a heat transfer problem. I show that the authors make infinity equal five and analyze the consequences of that magic

Perturbation approaches and Taylor series

We comment on the new trend in mathematical physics that consists of obtaining Taylor series for fabricated linear and nonlinear unphysical models by means of homotopy perturbation method (HPM), homotopy analysis method (HAM) and Adomian decomposition method (ADM). As an illustrative example we choose a recent application of the HPM to a dynamic system of anisotropic elasticity

Perturbation Theory for Population Dynamics

We prove that a recently proposed homotopy perturbation method for the treatment of population dynamics is just the Taylor expansion of the population variables about initial time. Our results show that this perturbation method fails to provide the global features of the ecosystem dynamics

Rational Approximation for Two-Point Boundary value problems

We propose a method for the treatment of two--point boundary value problems given by nonlinear ordinary differential equations. The approach leads to sequences of roots of Hankel determinants that converge rapidly towards the unknown parameter of the problem. We treat several problems of physical interest: the field equation determining the vortex profile in a Ginzburg--Landau effective theory, the fixed--point equation for Wilson's exact renormalization group, a suitably modified Wegner--Houghton's fixed point equation in the local potential approximation, a Riccati equation, and the Thomas--Fermi equation. We consider two models where the approach does not apply in order to show the limitations of our Pad\'{e}--Hankel approach.Comment: 13 pages, 1 figur

Harmonic oscillator in a one-dimensional box

We study a harmonic molecule confined to a one--dimensional box with impenetrable walls. We explicitly consider the symmetry of the problem for the cases of different and equal masses. We propose suitable variational functions and compare the approximate energies given by the variation method and perturbation theory with accurate numerical ones for a wide range of values of the box length. We analyze the limits of small and large box size

Alternative perturbation approaches in classical mechanics

We discuss two alternative methods, based on the Lindstedt--Poincar\'{e} technique, for the removal of secular terms from the equations of perturbation theory. We calculate the period of an anharmonic oscillator by means of both approaches and show that one of them is more accurate for all values of the coupling constant.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur

Iterative solution of differential equations

We discuss alternative iteration methods for differential equations. We provide a convergence proof for exactly solvable examples and show more convenient formulas for nontrivial problems.Comment: 12 page

Comment to: "The quantum square well with moving boundaries: a numerical analysis"

In this comment we show that the approach presented by Foj\'on et al~\cite{Fojon10} is not as accurate as they claim. A straightforward calculation using the models considered buy those authors clearly shows that the spectral method, which the authors criticize, proves to be considerably better.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figure