Differential equations, for those of us without a PhD in Really Hard Math, are formulae that may describe the state of a system at numerous discrete points or stages along the process. For example, if you have a robot arm that is going from point A to point B, you may use a differential equation to determine where it is in space between the two spots at any given phase in the process. However, calculating these equations for each step soon becomes computationally costly. MIT’s “closed form” method solves this problem by functionally modelling the full system description in a single computing step.
