Wing
Stanislaw Ulam & John von Neumann, 1949
Estimates π by randomly sampling points inside a square and checking whether they fall within an inscribed quarter-circle.
Tony Hoare, 1961
Finds the k-th smallest element by randomly partitioning and discarding the irrelevant half.
Burton Howard Bloom, 1970
A space-efficient probabilistic data structure for set membership queries with possible false positives but no false negatives.
Scott Kirkpatrick, C. Daniel Gelatt & Mario P. Vecchi, 1983
A probabilistic optimizer that explores an energy landscape, sometimes accepting worse moves while the temperature is high, then cools to settle near a low-energy state.