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 a minimum in a user-defined function with respect to one or more parameters using several different methods as specified by the user. In addition to that it can compute confidence intervals for the parameters by scanning the function around the minimum.

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 thousands 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 a Python frontend to the C++ code.[5]

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.CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
  2. http://inspirehep.net/search?ln=en&p=refersto%3Arecid%3A101965
  3. "Home page for new C++ MINUIT". Archived from the original on 2010-04-11. Retrieved 2008-08-03.
  4. Java port of MINUIT project
  5. iminuit - Jupyter-friendly Python frontend to the MINUIT2 C++ package
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