This Article From Issue
November-December 2015
Volume 103, Number 6
Page 374
DOI: 10.1511/2015.117.374
To the Editors:
I read with interest the column by Brian Hayes ("Programs and Probability" Computing Science, September–October) on developing a probabilistic programming language for computers. The article mentioned the Monte Carlo method and how its fundamentally random character is antithetical to the digital nature of computers. It is worth further elaborating on this irony. Monte Carlo methods were developed hand in hand with the original digital computers, with both used for weapons systems, specifically the hydrogen bomb. Furthermore, Monte Carlo calculations are a very widely used form of calculation today and thus a principal contribution of computers to numerical analysis. I suspect that many of the early computer pioneers would find it bizarre that their precise logical gate structures are now used to generate so many pseudorandom numbers.
Mark Gerstein
Yale University
New Haven, CT
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