So as I'm sure many of you know, I am a major math geek. I was very nearly a math major major math geek. (Say that three times fast.) What does that have to do with anything? Well, this is a math post. BEWARE, YE FAINT OF HEART or some such thing. So this stemmed from last Thursday. I've just been too busy (read: easily distracted) to actually write this up until now (office hours give me some decent free time when nobody actually shows up). Details under the cut!

( 2+2=5, as 2 approaches 2.5 )

Anyways, I've already tl;dr'd a lot on math in this post, so I'm going to cut this off here. Yep, I'm a total geek. But in a lot of ways, I needed this. I needed a reminder of why I'm in Computer Science - because I absolutely love stuff like this. This is what gets me excited. This is how I know I'm in the right major, even when individual classes have me discouraged.

EDIT: Added some crappy sketches! Yay! Also, a little bit of research on Wikipedia led me to realize that I've been misled, and as such part of the information in this post is wrong. I MUST CORRECT THIS.

'kay, so. What I called the Monte Carlo algorithm and the Las Vegas algorithm are not actually called those. In fact, Monte Carlo and Las Vegas are not actually random algorithms, but rather classes of random algorithms. Monte Carlo refers to all random algorithms that take a finite amount of resources to calculate, but don't always give the same answer. Rather, they give an approximation of the answer. Las Vegas algorithms, on the other hand, always produce the same answer, but randomly vary the amount of resources they need to find the answer. As such, the algorithms that I described here are examples of each kind of algorithm, rather than and algorithm with that name.

/END EDIT.

'til next time.