Fish Population Dynamic and Stock Assessment

8.2.1. Introduction

The Monte Carlo method was coined in the 1940s by John von Neumann, Stanislaw Ulam and Nicholas Metropolis, while they were working on nuclear weapon projects (Manhattan Project) in the Los Alamos National Laboratory. Monte Carlo methods (or Monte Carlo experiments) are a class of computational algorithms that rely on repeated random sampling to compute their results. Monte Carlo methods are often used in computer simulations of physical and mathematical systems. These methods are most suited to calculation by a computer and tend to be used when it is infeasible to compute an exact result with a deterministic algorithm. This method is also used to complement the theoretical derivations.