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This is my first attempt at graphics programming and as I went through it I was quite surprised by the simplicity of ray tracing. Before this, I hadn't imagined you could get beautiful pictures with so little code. I found the whole thing quite elegant.

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The same thing applies to lots of fields of computation. In fluid dynamics, for instance, a direct simulation of the Navier-stokes equations is quite straightforward and will produce the most accurate solution. All the complicated parts are layers and layers of tricks to save large amounts of compute time with (hopefully) negligable effects on the ultimate accuracy.

This is often true in statistics also. It's high time monte carlo was brought earlier in the curriculum. It's the gift that keeps giving.

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