Definition of Term: Validation

An emulator for a simulator is a statistical representation of our knowledge about the simulator. In particular, it enables us to predict what outputs the simulator would produce at any given configurations of input values. The process of validation consists of checking whether the actual simulator outputs at those input configurations are consistent with the statistical predictions made by the emulator.

In conjunction with a comparable statistical specification of knowledge about how the simulator relates to the real-world process that it is intended to represent, we can use an emulator to make statistical predictions of the real-world process. These can then also be validated by comparison with the corresponding real-world values.

The validation of a Gaussian process emulator is described in the procedure for validating a Gaussian process emulator (ProcValidateCoreGP).