Computationally

Computationally is an adverb formed from the adjective computational. It describes the manner in which something is performed or evaluated using computation, algorithms, or mathematical models rather than manual calculation or direct observation. When something is described as computationally based or computed, the emphasis is on the use of software, hardware, or formal methods to produce results or insights.

In practice, the term appears across disciplines such as computer science, mathematics, physics, and data science. It is commonly used with adjectives that denote cost or feasibility, for example computationally efficient, computationally expensive, or computationally intractable, and with verbs such as solve computationally or simulate computationally. Computational methods underpin areas like numerical analysis, algorithm design, simulations of physical systems, bioinformatics, and machine learning workflows.

Related concepts include computational complexity, which studies how resource requirements grow with input size; computational modeling and simulation, which build formal representations of systems; and numerical methods, which provide algorithms for approximating solutions. The adverb is distinct from terms that imply manual or mechanical processes and from the adjective computational, which describes the nature of the methods themselves. Etymologically, computational derives from compute, with -ational from Latin and the adverb formed by -ly.