Brian J. Williams – författare

In the past 15 to 20 years, the computer has become a popular tool for exploring the relationship between a measured response and factors thought to affect the response. In many cases, scientific theories exist that implicitly relate the response to the factors by means of systems of mathematical equations. There also exist numerical methods for accurately solving such equations and appropriate computer hardware and software to implement these methods. In many engineering applications, for example, the relationship is described by a dynamical system and the numerical method is a finite element code. In such situations, these numerical methods allow one to produce computer code that can generate the response corresponding to any given set of values of the factors. This allows one to conduct an "experiment" (called a "computer experiment") to explore the relationship between the response and the factors using the code. Indeed, in some cases computer experimentation is feasible when a properly designed physical experiment (the gold standard for establishing cause and effect) is impossible. For example, the number of input variables may be too large to consider performing a physical experiment or it may simply be economically prohibitive to run an experiment on the scale required to gather sufficient information to answer a particular research question. This book describes methods for designing and analyzing experiments conducted using computer code in lieu of a physical experiment. It discusses how to select the values of the factors at which to run the code (the design of the computer experiment) in light of the research objectives of the experimenter. It also provides techniques for analyzing the resulting data so as to achieve these research goals.

This book describes methods for designing and analyzing experiments that are conducted using a computer code, a computer experiment, and, when possible, a physical experiment. Computer experiments continue to increase in popularity as surrogates for and adjuncts to physical experiments. Since the publication of the first edition, there have been many methodological advances and software developments to implement these new methodologies. The computer experiments literature has emphasized the construction of algorithms for various data analysis tasks (design construction, prediction, sensitivity analysis, calibration among others), and the development of web-based repositories of designs for immediate application. While it is written at a level that is accessible to readers with Masters-level training in Statistics, the book is written in sufficient detail to be useful for practitioners and researchers. New to this revised and expanded edition:• An expanded presentation of basic material on computer experiments and Gaussian processes with additional simulations and examples      • A new comparison of plug-in prediction methodologies for real-valued simulator output• An enlarged discussion of space-filling designs including Latin Hypercube designs (LHDs), near-orthogonal designs, and nonrectangular regions• A chapter length description of process-based designs for optimization, to improve good overall fit, quantile estimation, and Pareto optimization • A new chapter describing graphical and numerical sensitivity analysis tools• Substantial new material on calibration-based prediction and inference for calibration parameters •  Lists of software that can be used to fit models discussed in the book to aid practitioners