Kriging

In statistics, originally in geostatistics, Kriging or Gaussian process regression is a method of interpolation for which the interpolated values are modeled by a Gaussian process governed by prior covariances, as opposed to a piecewise-polynomial spline chosen to optimize smoothness of the fitted values. Under suitable assumptions on the priors, Kriging gives the best linear unbiased prediction of the intermediate values. Interpolating methods based on other criteria such as smoothness need not yield the most likely intermediate values. The method is widely used in the domain of spatial analysis and computer experiments. The technique is also known as Wiener–Kolmogorov prediction, after Norbert Wiener and Andrey Kolmogorov.