Discussion: "Bayesian Optimal Design of Experiments for Inferring the Statistical Expectation of Expensive Black-Box Functions" (Pandita, P., Bilionis, I., and Panchal, J., 2019. ASME. J. Mech. Des. 141(10): 101404)

Abstract

The authors of the discussed paper simplified the information-based acquisition on estimating statistical expectation and developed analytical computation for each involved quantity under uniform input distribution. In this discussion, we show that (1) the last three terms of the acquisition always add up to zero, leaving a concise form with a much more intuitive interpretation of the acquisition; (2) the analytical computation of the acquisition can be generalized to arbitrary input distribution, greatly broadening the application of the developed framework.