The use of computer models to simulate engineered and natural systems has greatly affected our approach in these fields.
Powerful computers are now less expensive to acquire and software is much easier to use.
Because of these factors, the use of computer models has reduced the need to perform experimental and prototyping work, the design cycle time and cost have decreased, the reliability and manufacturability of the resulting products have improved, and our ability to model and understand complex phenomena has increased. Clearly, we must still use experimental data to test these models. Dr. Richard Hills is leading a project on model validation sponsored by the Computational Physics Group at Sandia National Laboratory. Dr. Hill's approach to model validation is to develop formal statistical tests to evaluate the level of confidence that we have in a model, using rigorous statistical comparisons between model predictions and experimental observations. Standard textbook statistical methods cannot be applied.