Likelihood description for comparing data with simulation of limited statistics

Understand

It is often not possible to construct a probability density function that describes the data.

• This can happen if there is no analytic description, and the number of parameters is too large so that it is impossible to simulate and tabulate all combinations.
• In these situations it is still interesting to rank simulation sets performed with different parameters in how well they compare to data.
• We propose a solution that appears to be better suited to this task than some of the obvious alternatives.