Predictions from science and engineering models depend on the values of the
model's input parameters. As the number of parameters increases, algorithmic
parameter studies like optimization or uncertainty quantification require many
more model evaluations. One way to combat this curse of dimensionality is to
seek an alternative parameterization with fewer variables that produces
comparable predictions. The active subspace is a low-dimensional linear
subspace defined by important directions in the model's input space; input
perturbations along these directions change the model's prediction more, on
average, than perturbations orthogonal to the important directions. We describe
a method for checking if a model admits an exploitable active subspace, and we
apply this method to a single-diode solar cell model with five input
parameters. We find that the maximum power of the solar cell has a dominant
one-dimensional active subspace, which enables us to perform thorough parameter
studies in one dimension instead of five