Closed-form expression

 In mathematics, an equation or system of equations（方程组） is said to have a closed-form solution if, and only if, at least one solution can be expressed analytically in terms of a bounded number of certain "well-known" functions. Typically, these well-known functions are defined to be elementary functions; so infinite series（无穷级数）, limits（极限）, and continued fractions（循环小数） are not permitted.

 For example, the roots of any quadratic equation （二次方程式）with complex coefficients（系数） can be expressed in closed form in terms of addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, and square root extraction（开方）, all elementary functions. However, there are quintic equations（五次方程式） without closed-form solutions using elementary functions.

 Changing the definition of "well-known" to include additional functions can change the set of equations with closed-form solutions. Many cumulative distribution functions（In probability theory, the cumulative distribution function (CDF), also called probability distribution function or just distribution function） cannot be expressed in closed form, unless one considers special functions such as the error function（In mathematics, the error function also called the Gauss error function (高斯误差函数)） or gamma function (In mathematics, the Gamma function is an extension of the factorial(阶乘) function to complex numbers.)to be well-known. For many practical computer applications, it is entirely reasonable to assume that the gamma function and other special functions are well-known, since numerical implementations are widely available.

 Because most practical cases do not have an analytical solution but still have a numerical one, for practical purposes analyticity is not important.

 In physics or biology, an analytic solution is a solution arrived at through the use of equations, rather than through a computer simulation(仿真) or a numerical computation. An analytic solution may be either exact or an approximation. While it is not always possible to get an analytic solution, it is usually favored because it supplements insights on the nature of the problem at hand.