English

A practical guide to computer simulations

Condensed Matter 2009-02-02 v1

Abstract

Here practical aspects of conducting research via computer simulations are discussed. The following issues are addressed: software engineering, object-oriented software development, programming style, macros, make files, scripts, libraries, random numbers, testing, debugging, data plotting, curve fitting, finite-size scaling, information retrieval, and preparing presentations. Because of the limited space, usually only short introductions to the specific areas are given and references to more extensive literature are cited. All examples of code are in C/C++.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0111531,
  title  = {A practical guide to computer simulations},
  author = {Alexander K. Hartmann and Heiko Rieger},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0111531},
  year   = {2009}
}

Comments

69 pages, with permission of Wiley-VCH, see http://www.wiley-vch.de (some screenshots with poor quality due to arXiv size restrictions) A comprehensively extended version will appear in spring 2009 as book at Word-Scientific, see http://www.worldscibooks.com/physics/6988.html