Hacker News new | ask | show | jobs
by arsenide 2535 days ago
If there is an analytic model, using Monte Carlo methods is extremely useful to validate the theoretical result. If both agree, it is unlikely that there is a mistake in the theoretical result: which is valuable information.

For something as straightforward as Bernoulli, where you plug values into a formula and are done, there is no reason to use MCM. However, I am in agreement that in more complicated cases (e.g. a probability distribution is based on some result of one Markov or Markov-like calculation — or possibly multiple), and the theory is slightly or much more complicated then there is a lot of value in Monte Carlo methods.