Optimal Simulator Selection

Ying Hung, Li Hsiang Lin, C. F.Jeff Wu

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Computer simulators are widely used for the study of complex systems. In many applications, there are multiple simulators available with different scientific interpretations of the underlying mechanism, and the goal is to identify an optimal simulator based on the observed physical experiments. To achieve the goal, we propose a selection criterion based on leave-one-out cross-validation. This criterion consists of a goodness-of-fit measure and a generalized degrees of freedom penalizing the simulator sensitivity to perturbations in the physical observations. Asymptotic properties of the selected optimal simulator are discussed. It is shown that the proposed procedure includes a conventional calibration method as a special case. The finite sample performance of the proposed procedure is demonstrated through numerical examples. In the application of cell biology, an optimal simulator is selected, which can shed light on the T cell recognition mechanism in the human immune system. Supplementary materials for this article are available online.

Original languageAmerican English
Pages (from-to)1264-1271
Number of pages8
JournalJournal of the American Statistical Association
Volume118
Issue number542
DOIs
StatePublished - 2023

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Statistics and Probability
  • Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty

Keywords

  • Calibration
  • Computer experiment
  • Cross-validation
  • Emulation
  • Generalized degrees of freedom

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