phenomenological model

A phenomenological model (sometimes referred to as a statistical model) is a mathematical expression that relates several different empirical observations of phenomena to each other, in a way which is consistent with fundamental theory, but is not directly derived from theory. In other words, a phenomenological model is not derived from first principles. A phenomenological model foregoes any attempt to explain why the variables interact the way they do, and simply attempts to describe the relationship, with the assumption that the relationship extends past the measured values. Regression analysis is a popular example of a phenomenological model.