QUICKCV is an IDL sample variance/cosmic variance calculator for some geometry for galaxies in given stellar mass bins as a function of mean redshift and redshift bin size.

Emerge (Empirical ModEl for the foRmation of GalaxiEs) populates dark matter halo merger trees with galaxies using simple empirical relations between galaxy and halo properties. For each model represented by a set of parameters, it computes a mock universe, which it then compares to observed statistical data to obtain a likelihood. Parameter space can be explored with several advanced stochastic algorithms such as MCMC to find the models that are in agreement with the observations.