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Note that the Metropolis algorithm does not specify how the changes
to the configuration should be made --- it just says that any proposed
change to the system should be accepted with a certain probability
that depends on the change in energy.
How the changes are made depends on the variables and the model being
studied. The only constraints on the update procedure are:
- it should be ergodic
- it should not be biased in such a way as to violate detailed balance
Another issue is efficiency --- the procedure should sample the
configuration space as effectively as possible. There is often some
freedom in tuning the algorithm to improve efficiency and performance.
Paul Coddington, Northeast Parallel Architectures Center at Syracuse University, paulc@npac.syr.edu