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Part IX — Monte Carlo Methods

Computing with randomness: generating random numbers, sampling from distributions, estimating expectations by simulation, and the variance-reduction and resampling techniques (bootstrap, jackknife) that make simulation estimates usable.

Topics

Topic Focus
Random Number Generation Pseudorandom generators and seeding
Sampling Methods Inverse-transform and related recipes for sampling from a distribution
Monte Carlo Simulation Estimating expectations by simulation, with error rates
Importance Sampling Reweighting samples from a proposal distribution
Rejection Sampling Accept–reject sampling from an envelope distribution
Variance Reduction Antithetic variates, control variates, and stratification
Bootstrap Methods Resampling the data to approximate sampling distributions
Jackknife Methods Leave-one-out resampling for bias and variance estimates