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The lattice Boltzmann (LB) method, which is closely related to the lattice Gas (LG) method, will be investigated in detail in this paper. The LG method is boolean in nature using only bits to indicate the presence or absence of a particle moving in a particular direction and speed. The absence of floating point operations gives the LG method unconditional numerical stability but restricts it to specialized hardware that can perform the Boolean logical operations efficiently. The Boolean character also results in a noisy signal that must be averaged over space/time for reliable estimates. The LB method, on the other hand, tracks the distribution functions (or time averages) of the particles. As a result, floating point numbers have to be used and so the method is not boolean. While this makes the LB method susceptible to instabilities due to accumulation of round-off errors, it allows the LB method to use a variety of existing computer platforms.