  Background: Modern statistical tools provide the ability to compare the
information content of observables and provide a path to explore which
experiments would be most useful to give insight into and constrain theoretical
models. Purpose: In this work we study these tools in the context of nuclear
reactions with the goal of constraining the optical potential. Method: We
compare constraints coming from two sets of elastic data: angular distributions
from unpolarized elastic scattering and vector analyzing powers. Three
different statistical tools are examined: i) the sensitivity analysis based on
derivatives; ii) the principle component analysis and iii) the Bayesian
evidence. We apply these tools to study reactions on 48Ca and 208Pb each at two
different beam energies. Results: Considering the standard outputs of the
Bayesian optimization, there is very little difference between the width of the
posterior distributions and confidence intervals when only one of either
differential cross sections or polarization data is used in the optimization.
While the principle component analysis shows no significant difference between
the two observables, the sensitivity studies indicate that the optical model
parameters have larger variability with elastic scattering angular distribution
data compared to the polarization data. The Bayesian evidence shows significant
variability between the two observables, for several of the cases here
considered. Conclusions: Under the assumptions made in our study, our results
show that, elastic scattering angular distributions have a larger impact in
constraining the optical potentials than polarization data. In contrast,
though, for most cases we studied, polarization data and elastic angular
distributions contain similar information.
