Description:
<jats:title>Abstract</jats:title><jats:p>The constitutive relationship between fields in electromagnetic media is cast in error form. For well‐posed static problems, the error splits systematically into complementary functionals. Error minimization provides a universal variational principle that generates complementary and dual solution formulations. The error, which is wholly attributed to the numerical constraints in approximate solutions, is always defined and computable locally and globally.</jats:p>