Great Life Wisdom in chapter 2 of the delightful 1970 computer science textbook Numerical Methods that Work by Forman S Acton:

The ideas of computational strategy

One of the more persistent messages of this book is an exhortation to suit the tool to the task. This exhortation, in turn, demands that both the tools and the task be understood. The essential shape of the problem to be solved must be discovered and then used as the driving force for the solution strategy. An elegant algorithm applied to the wrong problem is not apt to produce much enlightenment. Nor are large numbers of random trials to be justified simply because they are relatively easy. Seeking needles in haystacks, even with an electronic computer, is time consuming. It behooves the problem analyst to seek carefully for the important characteristics of his problem and then to pick a strategy that is appropriate. This art is difficult, for equations are often not what they at first appear nor are our numerical tools even close to universally applicable. A method that can find the isolated root of a cotangent-like curve may fail spectacularly when used on a polynomial with a triple root and a few bumps ...

... ditto for any other challenge in the World, eh?!

Suit the Tool to the Task

_{(cf Book Cover Judgment (2002-04-21), ...) - ^z - 2025-01-19}