MINUIT

MINUIT, now MINUIT2, is a numerical minimization computer program originally written in the FORTRAN programming language[1] by CERN staff physicist Fred James in the 1970s. The program searches for minima in a user-defined function with respect to one or more parameters using several different methods as specified by the user. The original FORTRAN code was later ported to C++ by the ROOT project; both the FORTRAN and C++ versions are in use today. The program is very widely used in particle physics, and hundreds of published papers cite use of MINUIT.[2] In the early 2000s Fred James started a project to implement MINUIT in C++ using object-oriented programming. The new MINUIT is an optional package (minuit2) in the ROOT release. As of October 2014 the latest version is 5.34.14, released on 24 January 2014.[3] There is also a Java port[4] as well as several Python ports.[5][6]

MINUIT is not a program that can be distributed as an executable binary to be run by a relatively unskilled user: the user must write and compile a subroutine defining the function to be optimized, and oversee the optimization process.

References

  1. ↑ "Archived copy". Archived from the original on 2008-05-26. Retrieved 2008-08-03.
  2. ↑ http://inspirehep.net/search?ln=en&p=refersto%3Arecid%3A101965
  3. ↑ Home page for new C++ MINUIT
  4. ↑ Java port of MINUIT project
  5. ↑ PyMinuit - Python port of MINUIT project
  6. ↑ IMinuit - Interactive IPython Friendly Mimizer based on SEAL Minuit
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