Overview

The py_grama package is an implementation of a grammar of model analysis (grama)—a language for describing and analyzing models.

What Models?

Statisticians often use “model” to refer to random variable models. Scientists and engineers often use “model” to refer to simplified physics resulting in function models. In grama we refer to a collection of random variables and functions together as a model.

Why grama?

Considering both the functional mapping between variables and the uncertainties in those variables is of critical importance to a full understanding of a given problem. Given the “split” perspective between statisticians and engineers, unifying the perspectives is a conceptual challenge.

While much effort in the uncertainty quantification (UQ) community has been made on merging the two perspectives on the algorithmic side, relatively little work has been done to merge the two perspectives conceptually. The aforementioned understanding of “models”—functions plus random variables—is a step towards conceptually unifying these two perspectives.

Why py_grama?

Furthermore, virtually no work has been done to make UQ techniques easily learnable and accessible. The py_grama package is heavily inspired by the Tidyverse, partly in terms of functional programming patterns, but primarily in terms of its user-first perspective. py_grama is designed to help users learn and use UQ tools to analyze models.

Why quantify uncertainty?

Uncertainty quantification is a relatively new scientific discipline, so the motivation for doing UQ may not be immediately obvious. The following example notebooks demonstrate UQ in a number of settings:

What does it look like?

For a quick demonstration of py_grama, see the following demo notebooks:

  • The model building demo shows how to build a grama model in a scientifically-reproducible way.
  • The model analysis demo shows how grama can be used to analyze an existing model, using compact syntax to probe how both functions and randomness affect model outputs.