Juan P Neirotti and Nestor Caticha 2006 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 39 10355 doi:10.1088/0305-4470/39/33/006
Juan P Neirotti1 and Nestor Caticha2
Show affiliationsWe discuss the collective behaviour of a set of operators and variables that constitute a program and the emergence of meaningful computational properties in the language of statistical mechanics. This is done by appropriately modifying available Monte Carlo methods to deal with hierarchical structures. The study suggests, in analogy with simulated annealing, a method to automatically design programs. Reasonable solutions can be found, at low temperatures, when the method is applied to simple toy problems such as finding an algorithm that determines the roots of a function or one that makes a nonlinear regression. Peaks in the specific heat are interpreted as signalling phase transitions which separate regions where different algorithmic strategies are used to solve the problem.
82B80 Numerical methods (Monte Carlo, series resummation, etc.) (See also 65-XX, 81T80)
Issue 33 (18 August 2006)
Received 9 January 2006, in final form 27 June 2006
Published 2 August 2006
Juan P Neirotti and Nestor Caticha 2006 J. Phys. A: Math. Gen. 39 10355
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