Due to the fundamental role of differential equations in science and engineering it has long been a basic task of numerical analysts to generate numerical values of solutions to differential equations. Nearly all approaches to this task involve a "finitization" of the original differential equation problem, usually by a projection into a finite-dimensional space. By far the most popular of these finitization processes consists of a reduction to a difference equation problem for functions which take values only on a grid of argument points. Although some of these finite difference methods have been known for a long time, their wide applica bility and great efficiency came to light only with the spread of electronic computers. This in tum strongly stimulated research on the properties and practical use of finite-difference methods. While the theory or partial differential equations and their discrete analogues is a very hard subject, and progress is consequently slow, the initial value problem for a system of first order ordinary differential equations lends itself so naturally to discretization that hundreds of numerical analysts have felt inspired to invent an ever-increasing number of finite-difference methods for its solution. For about 15 years, there has hardly been an issue of a numerical journal without new results of this kind; but clearly the vast majority of these methods have just been variations of a few basic themes. In this situation, the classical text book by P."

Scientific Computation with Result Verification has been a persevering research topic at the Institute for Applied Mathematics of Karlsruhe University for many years. A good number of meetings have been devoted to this area. The latest of these meetings was held from 30 September to 2 October, 1987, in Karlsruhe; it was co-sponsored by the GAMM Committee on "Computer Arithmetic and Scientific Computation." - - This volume combines edited versions of selected papers presented at this confer ence, including a few which were presented at a similar meeting one year earlier. The selection was made on the basis of relevance to the topic chosen for this volume. All papers are original contributions. In an appendix, we have supplied a short account of the Fortran-SC language which permits the programming of algorithms with result verification in a natural manner. The editors hope that the publication of this material as a Supplementum of Computing will further stimulate the interest of the scientific community in this important tool for Scientific Computation. In particular, we would like to make application scientists aware of its potential. The papers in the second chapter of this volume should convince them that automatic result verification may help them to design more reliable software for their particular tasks. We wish to thank all contributors for adapting their manuscripts to the goals of this volume. We are also grateful to the Publisher, Springer-Verlag of Vienna, for an efficient and quick production."