B-series methods are exactly the affine equivariant methods (Q726723)

B-series are a type of expansion, basic in numerical integration methods. Numerical integration methods that can be expanded in B-series correspond to sequences of maps. An open problem was to characterize those sequences that arise from B-series. This is solved here. The main result states that an integration method is a B-series method if, and only if, it defines an affine equivariant sequence. Here affine invariance means that it respects all affine maps between affine spaces.