An attempt to trace the birth of importance sampling
arXiv:2206.12286
Abstract
In this note, we try to trace the birth of importance sampling (IS) back to 1949. We found the classical formulation of IS in a paper from Kahn in June 1949. As for the appearance of the expression importance sampling itself, it may have appeared a few months later, maybe in 1949 during conferences, but there is no published article with the name before 1950.