'Shrinking Bull's-eye' Algorithm Speeds Up Complex Modeling From Days To Hours (mit.edu)

rtoz sends word of the discovery of a new algorithm that dramatically reduces the computation time for complex processes. Scientists from MIT say it conceptually resembles a shrinking bull's eye, incrementally narrowing down on its target. "With this method, the researchers were able to arrive at the same answer as a classic computational approaches, but 200 times faster." Their full academic paper is available at the arXiv. "The algorithm can be applied to any complex model to quickly determine the probability distribution, or the most likely values, for an unknown parameter. Like the MCMC analysis, the algorithm runs a given model with various inputs — though sparingly, as this process can be quite time-consuming. To speed the process up, the algorithm also uses relevant data to help narrow in on approximate values for unknown parameters."

Comments

IANACS

[Anonymous Coward]

So I'm a lay-idiot, but whats to stop this getting stuck on a local maxima / minima for a given parameter if it's not doing a comprehensive evaluation?