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16.6 Control parameters for DAE solving

Using dae_tol one can specify the relative_tolerance, absolute_tolerance, and max_num_steps parameters in order to control the DAE solution.

vector[3] y_hat[N] = dae_tol(chem, yy0, yp0, t0, ts,
                             relative_tolerance,
                             absolute_tolerance,
                             max_num_steps,
                             alpha, beta, gamma);

relative_tolerance and absolute_tolerance control accuracy the solver tries to achieve, and max_num_steps specifies the maximum number of steps the solver will take between output time points before throwing an error.

The control parameters must be data variables – they cannot be parameters or expressions that depend on parameters, including local variables in any block other than transformed data and generated quantities. User-defined function arguments may be qualified as only allowing data arguments using the data qualifier.

The default value of relative and absolute tolerances are \(10^{-10}\) and the maximum number of steps between outputs is one hundred million. We suggest the user choose the control parameters according to the problem in hand, and resort to the defaults only when no knowledge of the DAE system or the physics it models is available.

Maximum number of steps

The maximum number of steps can be used to stop a runaway simulation. This can arise in when MCMC moves to a part of parameter space very far from where a differential equation would typically be solved. In particular this can happen during warmup. With the non-stiff solver, this may happen when the sampler moves to stiff regions of parameter space, which will requires small step sizes.