Introduction

Abstract

Until the advent of powerful and accessible computing methods, the experimenter was often confronted with a difficult choice. Either describe an accurate model of a phenomenon, which would usually preclude the computation of explicit answers, or choose a standard model which would allow this computation, but may not be a close representation of a realistic model. This dilemma is present in many branches of statistical applications, for example, in electrical engineering, aeronautics, biology, networks, and astronomy. To use realistic models, the researchers in these disciplines have often developed original approaches for model fitting that are customized for their own problems. (This is particularly true of physicists, the originators of Markov chain Monte Carlo methods.) Traditional methods of analysis, such as the usual numerical analysis techniques, are not well adapted for such settings.

There must be, he thought, some key, some crack in this mystery he could use to achieve an answer.

—P.C. Doherty, Crown in Darkness