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What is the difference between Simulated Annealing and Monte-Carlo Simulations?
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Problem
What is the difference between Simulated Annealing and Monte-Carlo Simulations? Is Simulated Annealing a specific type of Monte-Carlo simulation, or are they completely separate techniques?
Solution
Monte Carlo simulation is a method for computing a function. Simulated annealing is an optimization heuristic. Other than that, the only common thread behind these two methods is the use of randomness.
In Monte Carlo simulation, we are aiming at computing some quantity $A$ by finding an easily samplable random variable $X$ whose expectation is $A$. We estimate $A$ by averaging many samples of $X$. More sophisticated versions of this are rejection sampling and MCMC.
Simulated annealing is a heuristic for optimizing an objective function $f$ over a domain $D$. We start with an arbitrary point $x \in D$, and then try making local changes which improve the value of $f$; this is local search. In simulated annealing, we also allow making local changes which worsen the value of $f$, with some small probability. The probability is smaller the more the change makes $f$ worse.
In Monte Carlo simulation, we are aiming at computing some quantity $A$ by finding an easily samplable random variable $X$ whose expectation is $A$. We estimate $A$ by averaging many samples of $X$. More sophisticated versions of this are rejection sampling and MCMC.
Simulated annealing is a heuristic for optimizing an objective function $f$ over a domain $D$. We start with an arbitrary point $x \in D$, and then try making local changes which improve the value of $f$; this is local search. In simulated annealing, we also allow making local changes which worsen the value of $f$, with some small probability. The probability is smaller the more the change makes $f$ worse.
Context
StackExchange Computer Science Q#87943, answer score: 6
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