Physical data assessment for energy confinement scaling laws

The principle of data adaptive planning (DAP) is applied to estimate the information gained by a single datum from a given set of data about the parameters of interest. The information gain is thereby quantified by an information measure. By using DAP one is capable to express the importance of a single datum. A W7-AS confinement data set was analyzed with respect to different energy confinement scaling laws, the importance of the data points is assessed with respect to the respective scaling law. The physical question (i.e. the scaling law constraints) thereby shows significant impact on the expected information gain of single data points. (author)