Likelihood description for comparing data with simulation of limited statistics

Abstract

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.