Re:Challenge to scientists: does your ten-year-old code stil...
by spott on Thursday August 27, 2020 @01:25PM
(#24296060)
>when that is the entire point of Monte Carlo methods and doesn't change their result.
Two nitpicks: a) it shouldn't change the conclusions, but MC calculations will get different results depending on the seed. and b) it is considered good practice in reproducible science to fix the seed so that the results of subsequent runs give exactly the same results.
Ultimately, I think there is a balance: really poor code can lead to incorrect conclusions... but you don't need production ready code for scientific exploration.
Two nitpicks: a) it shouldn't change the conclusions, but MC calculations will get different results depending on the seed. and b) it is considered good practice in reproducible science to fix the seed so that the results of subsequent runs give exactly the same results.
Ultimately, I think there is a balance: really poor code can lead to incorrect conclusions... but you don't need production ready code for scientific exploration.