  Gaussian process fitting, or kriging, is often used to create a model from a
set of data. Many available software packages do this, but we show that very
different results can be obtained from different packages even when using the
same data and model. We describe the parameterization, features, and
optimization used by eight different fitting packages that run on four
different platforms. We then compare these eight packages using various data
functions and data sets, revealing that there are stark differences between the
packages. In addition to comparing the prediction accuracy, the predictive
variance--which is important for evaluating precision of predictions and is
often used in stopping criteria--is also evaluated.

Computation