Comparison of statistical sampling methods with ScannerBit, the GAMBIT scanning module

Understand

We introduce ScannerBit, the statistics and sampling module of the public, open-source global fitting framework GAMBIT.

• ScannerBit provides a standardised interface to different sampling algorithms, enabling the use and comparison of multiple computational methods for inferring profile likelihoods, Bayesian posteriors, and other statistical quantities.
• The current version offers random, grid, raster, nested sampling, differential evolution, Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) and ensemble Monte Carlo samplers.
• We also announce the release of a new standalone differential evolution sampler, Diver, and describe its design, usage and interface to ScannerBit.