Patent ID: 8290880

Claim:
A computer-implemented method for estimating via a processor a parameter that represents data describing a physical system, the method comprising: randomizing data representative of a population of items for which the parameter is known, wherein the parameter corresponds to price consistency, and the physical system comprises at least one of a hardware element or a service element with respect to a networked information technology system; generating data representative of a pseudo population of items using a known perturbation that provides a mean level shift of the parameter, the data representative of the pseudo population of items being included with the data representative of the population of items for which the parameter is known to form a revised population; selecting a bootstrap sample of a minimum sample size of the revised population; performing a sensitivity study on the parameter of the items comprising the bootstrap sample to determine a level of change of a predicted parameter value relative to a parameter value of the bootstrap sample; revising at least one of a range, a probability distribution or the minimum sample size of a model that predicts the parameter based on the level of change to produce at least one of a revised range, a revised probability distribution or a revised minimum sample size, taking into account an effect of the known perturbation applied to the pseudo population; repeating the steps of selecting, performing and revising until the sensitivity study indicates that the level of change of the predicted parameter value is acceptably small; and estimating via the processor a value of the parameter for the population based on the predicted parameter value that corresponds to the acceptably small level of change.