# Literature Requests & Opinions: Conventions At MO

Background: Having failed to solve a general problem that I posted more than a year ago on mathoverflow.net, I have now resorted to numerical methods (involving finite probability distributions) . This has resulted in probabilities of events given by sums of polynomial degree n terms each obtained from a probability generating function . The terms are functions of n decision variables subject to linear constraints. Off the shelf, numerical non-linear optimisation methods are at present being used to optimise the decision variables. Even for small problems, n=4 , there are some minor choice of algorithm questions and I would like to solve up to n=16: there are English county chess teams of 16 players. I trust Normality will kick in before n=16

Question: What is the convention here about seeking literature references and relative expert opinion about numerical methods for special structure problems , related to (probability) problems which have so far escaped analytical treatment? More colloquially, what can a poster get away with?

I think the best way to find good conventions for such questions is to look at examples. I suggest searching MathOverflow with [reference-request] [na.numerical-analysis] (link). Throw in more tags and keywords if you wish. Find questions that have positive score and have received useful answers to see what works well here.