Output Pane

The Output pane is on the PEST Properties dialog box under Control Data.

The variables specified on the Output pane are described in the PEST User Manual, Part I, Section 4.2.10. More extensive descriptions of these variables are in the PEST user manual.

ICOV, ICOR, and IEIG If PEST is run in “estimation” mode, and if neither singular value decomposition nor LSQR is employed in solution of the inverse problem, then at the end of each iteration of the inversion process PEST can write a “matrix file” containing linear estimates of the posterior covariance and correlation coefficient matrices, as well as eigenvectors and eigenvalues of the posterior covariance matrix. The posterior covariance matrix, together with its correlation coefficients and eigenvectors/eigenvalues, can be used to examine the “health” of an inverse problem in which regularization is purely manual and therefore implied in the definition of the parameters themselves. A better way to compute a posterior covariance matrix is to use the PREDUNC7 utility; this is not troubled by problem ill-posedness. With mathematical regularization in place, the information provided by eigenvector decomposition of the posterior covariance matrix, and by parameter correlation coefficients computed from this matrix, is not really needed, for the mathematical regularization process, instead of the user, takes care of possible inverse problem ill-posedness.

IRES This variable controls the writing of a “resolution data file”. This is a binary file which is used by utilities such as RESPROC, RESWRIT and PARAMERR which compute the resolution matrix, and quantify post-calibration predictive error variance. These utility programs are less informative than more recent programs such as those comprising the PREDVAR* and PREDUNC* suites which have superseded them; the latter programs do not read a resolution data file.

JCOSAVE This variable controls recording of the binary Jacobian matrix file (i.e. JCO file). It is recommended that the Jacobian matrix file be saved unless the inverse problem size is very large and the MAXCOMPDIM variable has been employed to activate internal compressed Jacobian matrix storage; in the latter case the accessing of a large Jacobian matrix for the purpose of recording a JCO file can be computationally intensive.

JCOSAVEITN PEST can write the Jacobian matrix after each iteration. JCOSAVEITN can be used to activate or deactivate this capability. JCOSAVEITN should be set to write the Jacobian matrix if it is desired that the MULJCOSEN utility be employed for monitoring of changes to composite parameter and/or observation sensitivities during the inversion process.

VERBOSEREC PEST can write a detailed (verbose) or condensed run record file. By default, a detailed run record file is written but if it becomes too large to be useful, a condensed version can be written instead. VERBOSEREC controls whether or not a detailed run record file is written.

REISAVEITN controls whether a residuals file is written after each iteration. If these files are written, at the end of the inversion process, there will be a sequence of files which collectively document the history of model-to-measurement misfit for every observation comprising the PEST input dataset.

PARSAVEITN determines whether PEST saves a parameter value file at the end of every iteration of the inversion process. This containing best parameter values achieved during that iteration, irrespective of whether they improved the overall objective function or not. A “parameter history” of the inversion process is thus recorded.

PARSAVERUN can be used to instruct PEST to record run-specific parameter value files. At the time of writing this functionality is only available if PEST is run as BEOPEST.