Saturday, January 08, 2005

I gotta get thru this...

I gotta get thru this...
I gotta take gotta take my mind off u [blogger.com]

pressure pressure pressure...such bad karma
stress stress stress...so not good for the skin...

i demand free emergency facials and optional intravenous feeding of Red Bull for all students who need to meet deadlines ...

i need to figure out how to program a monte carlo simulation within the next 48 hours or i'm screwed! As with alot of probability theory , this was invented by people with too many brain cells, who decide to play card games, like Mr Ulam, a Polish mathematician:


The first thoughts and attempts I made to practice [the Monte Carlo Method] were suggested by a question which occurred to me in 1946 as I was convalescing from an illness and playing solitaires. The question was what are the chances that a Canfield solitaire laid out with 52 cards will come out successfully? After spending a lot of time trying to estimate them by pure combinatorial calculations, I wondered whether a more practical method than “abstract thinking” might not be to lay it out say one hundred times and simply observe and count the number of successful plays. This was already possible to envisage with the beginning of the new era of fast computers, and I immediately thought of problems of neutron diffusion and other questions of mathematical physics, and more generally how to change processes described by certain differential equations into an equivalent form interpretable as a succession of random operations. Later … [in 1946, I] described the idea to John von Neumann, and we began to plan actual calculations.

Yeah, those thoughts cross my mind all the time when i'm playing solitaire on my PC :) Well he invented the Monte Carlo technique for fun, the real work came when he designed the hydrogen bomb in 1951, must have been lighting matches next to a cow's backside or something.

Ok, let me have just one more game of solitaire, i'm sure it'll help me figure out what the hell a MC simulation is... im convalescing i tell ya!


Posted by BB @ 1/08/2005 09:38:00 PM

Read or Post a Comment

ooo bahrainia, you're giving away far too much of your identity. If you're doing monte carlo, then it means you must be studying either applied maths, computational physics, or finance... hmmm I wonder...

But anyways, programming Monte Carlo is not that bad. You basically just throw some random numbers at the function you want to integrate. But I found the proof of MC needlessly complicated... it's quite an intuitive idea, but the proof is not very intuitive. So if all you need to do is write an MC program, then DON'T waste your time with the theory... just do it.

Anyways, best of luck!

Posted by Blogger Chanad @ 1/09/2005 01:04:00 AM #
 

lifesaver chan'ad. i'll get on with the program right away....got too bogged down in the damn calculus...

Posted by Blogger BB @ 1/09/2005 01:20:00 AM #
 

Red Bull, gross! I guess it's better intravenously, at least you don't have to taste it.

Posted by Blogger sume @ 1/10/2005 02:52:00 PM #
 

all those years at uni, i thought it was just a way to figure out how to get rich in a casino :-)good luck, ull get thru it, if you dont....hehehe....buy a cookbook...

love,
changaize

Posted by Anonymous Anonymous @ 1/10/2005 05:44:00 PM #
 

sume: red bull is like toxic acid, carcinogic and smelly, and like duracell, keeps you going for longer...

changaiz: Delia Smith has a website, you can even get a massive poster and drool over her Braised Beef ghoulash with pimenton all day.

Btw i missed the deadline, then bumped into my professor in the corridor and held my head in shame as i tried to come up with some pathetic excuse...other than i spent the holidays cruising Paris.

Posted by Blogger BB @ 1/10/2005 06:10:00 PM #
 

Ah well if youre familair with her website then you dont need a cookbook. When are you cooking me lunch then? Only halal beef of course :-)

Changaize

Posted by Anonymous Anonymous @ 1/10/2005 06:26:00 PM #
 

would you like your beef rare, medium or well-done? Comes freshly cooked and served with several different sauces, rat poison, pesticide or venom and marinated in liquified sarin.

Posted by Blogger BB @ 1/10/2005 06:40:00 PM #
 

deeply hurt....sulking now :-( oh the pain.....
changaize

Posted by Anonymous Anonymous @ 1/10/2005 08:14:00 PM #
 

Ok ok... i'll make u lunch one day but not this side of 2005 at the rate things are falling on my head...u know what who needs to cook... i'll order a pizza

Posted by Anonymous Anonymous @ 1/10/2005 10:10:00 PM #
 

Hey Bahrainia,

I have just started reading your blog and I am impressed, you have my support! Maybe we could connect someday, your thoughts are so like mine! Good luck
Amy

Posted by Anonymous Anonymous @ 4/12/2005 07:26:00 PM #
 

hi amy,

welcome...! stay in touch. bahrania

Posted by Blogger BB @ 4/12/2005 09:52:00 PM #
 
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