Monte Carlo Methods

This introduction to Monte Carlo methods seeks to identify and study the unifying elements that underlie their effective application. Initial chapters provide a short treatment of the probability and statistics needed as background, enabling those without experience in Monte Carlo techniques to apply these ideas to their research. The book focuses on two basic themes: The first is the importance of random walks as they occur both in natural stochastic systems and in their relationship to integral and differential equations. The second theme is that of variance reduction in general and importance sampling in particular as a technique for efficient use of the methods. Rando…