Profits and Pitfalls of Timescales in Asymptotics

The method of multiple timescales is widely used in engineering and mathematical physics. In this article we draw attention to the literature on the comparison of various perturbation methods. We indicate where we can obtain an advantage from the concept of timescales, and we present examples where the anticipation of timescales makes sense and cases where, because of resonances or bifurcations, the analysis is less straightforward. In a number of problems second order approximations are essential to understand the phenomena. We will conclude from these examples that the anticipation of timescales as in the multiple timescales method may give misleading results; methods that do not anticipate timescales a priori such as averaging and renormalization should be used in research problems.