Quantifying Distributional Input Uncertainty via Inflated Kolmogorov-Smirnov Confidence Band

Abstract

In stochastic simulation, input uncertainty refers to the propagation of the statistical noise in calibrating input models to impact output accuracy, in addition to the Monte Carlo simulation noise. The vast majority of the input uncertainty literature focuses on estimating target output quantities that are real-valued. However, outputs of simulation models are random and real-valued targets essentially serve only as summary statistics. To provide a more holistic assessment, we study the input uncertainty problem from a distributional view, namely we construct confidence bands for the entire output distribution function. Our approach utilizes a novel test statistic whose asymptotic consists of the supremum of the sum of a Brownian bridge and a suitable mean-zero Gaussian process, which generalizes the Kolmogorov-Smirnov statistic to account for input uncertainty. Regarding implementation, we also demonstrate how to use subsampling to efficiently estimate the covariance function of the Gaussian process, thereby leading to an implementable estimation of the quantile of the test statistic and a statistically valid confidence band. Numerical results demonstrate how our new confidence bands provide valid coverage for output distributions under input uncertainty that is not achievable by conventional approaches.