You're quite right when the maxima or minima happens near a
discontinunity -- I was thinking of more gentle models.


On Feb 25, 7:36 pm, Roy Smith wrote:
In article .com,

"Tony" wrote:
Don't get too tangled up in trying to find some 'optimum'. This is
instructive: do a manual calculation of what you consider might be
three or four 'likely best' routes. When you get done cranking the
numbers, you'll likely find not an important difference in your
several results. It's that old thing when we learned calculus --
nothing very interesting happens near a maxima or minima.

Lots of curves have very interesting things happen at the maxima.
Coefficient of lift vs. angle of attack. Deflection vs. load factor for
the main wing spar. Leakage current vs. voltage for electrical insulation.