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The beginning of the Monte Carlo method (1987) [pdf]

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Re: The beginning of the Monte Carlo method (1987) [pdf]

#5

Post by srvmshr »

atan2 wrote: post #2

I cannot believe a raw link to Wikipedia made it to the top stories.

A while ago, I submitted a raw Wiki link to "Ligne Claire", a drawing style adopted by Hergé of "Adventures of Tintin" fame. That made it to #1 and remained for a few hours. It is not very unusual.

Re: The beginning of the Monte Carlo method (1987) [pdf]

#6

Post by bardcore »

I didn't realize how integral Monte Carlo sims were to our early advances in nuclear technology. It makes sense to me though- it seems like the Monte Carlo method lets you punch above your weight class in terms of measuring and predicting phenomena that are too complex, or too expensive to deterministically model.

My intuition tells me that it's effectiveness would fall off as the complexity of the in/out relationship scales. Is this true? Or can sufficient sample density overcome arbitrary levels of that type of complexity?

Re: The beginning of the Monte Carlo method (1987) [pdf]

#7

Post by vasco »

bardcore wrote: post #6

I didn't realize how integral Monte Carlo sims were to our early advances in nuclear technology. It makes sense to me though- it seems like the Monte Carlo method lets you punch above your weight class in terms of measuring and predicting phenomena that are too complex, or too expensive to deterministically model. My intuition tells me that it's effectiveness would fall off as the complexity of the in/out relationshi…

You should be able to model "infinite" complexity, the way people design analog circuits is basically this.

Re: The beginning of the Monte Carlo method (1987) [pdf]

#9

Post by melling »

atan2 wrote: post #2

I cannot believe a raw link to Wikipedia made it to the top stories.

Some people on HN farm for karma points. They frequently post Wikipedia articles. It seems somewhat effective.

There are certain topics that attract a bit of quick attention.

Re: The beginning of the Monte Carlo method (1987) [pdf]

#10

Post by dang »

atan2 wrote: post #2

I cannot believe a raw link to Wikipedia made it to the top stories.

Edit: as if to illustrate the below, someone found a more specific third-party article so we've since switched the URL. More at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32890671.

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Happens all the time! https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

It's a good practice not to link to wikipedia.org when a more in-depth or specific third-party source is available, or if the topic is a well known one (too generic). But that leaves a lot of Wikipedia pages on more obscure topics, and those make fine HN submissions, as long as the topic is of intellectual interest and not particularly correlated with other things. And as long as we don't overdo it.

Past explanations about this: https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que...

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=30307077

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23929687

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23249978

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