AaCBrown
Posts:
171
Registered:
12/18/04
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Re: Simulating iid Poisson variates
Posted:
Jun 21, 1996 10:15 AM
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jerry@mint.hnrc.tufts.edu (Jerry Dallal) in
<1996Jun20.144625@mint.hnrc.tufts.edu> writes:
> I'd like to make a pitch for brute force when the only concern
> is getting the job done quickly and correctly. . . . I'm convinced
> there's nothing to be gained by elegance here even if I had to
> run this job many times each day. Of course, if you've got a truly
> massive job, elegance can be critical, but elegance often provides
> many entry points for errors in coding and logic that quickly
> erases potential gains.
No doubt this is sometimes true. But for many things there is a right way
and a wrong way: the right way is elegant, fast, and numerically stable;
the wrong way is inelegant, slow, and numerically unstable. These things
often go together.
The extra programming time is often useful for understanding the problem.
I realize you specified the "only concern is getting the job done." But
this appears to be the case much more often than it really is. I often
realize half-way through a job that it doesn't need to be done at all.
This wouldn't happen if you used a brute-force method.
Aaron C. Brown
New York, NY
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