Methods for Fitting the Right-Truncated Weibull Distribution to Life-Test and Survival Data

✍ Scribed by Dr. Dallas R. Wingo

• Publisher: John Wiley and Sons
• Year: 2007
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 345 KB
• Volume: 30
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0323-3847
• DOI: 10.1002/bimj.4710300505

✦ Synopsis

This paper develops mathematical and computational methoda for fitting, by the method of maximum likelihbod (m), the two-parameter, right-truncated Weibull dietribution (RTWD) to life-teat or survival data. &me important statistical properties of the RTWD are derived and ML estimating equations for the scale and shape parameters of the RTWD are developed. The ML equations are used to express the scale parameter BB an analytic function of the shape parameter and to establish a computationally useful lower bound on the ML estimate of the shape parameter.

This bound is a function only of the sample observations and the (known) truncation point T.

The ML equations are reducible to a single nonlinear, transcendental equation in the shape parameter, and 8 computationally efficient algorithm is described for solving this equation. The ptactical use of the methods is illustrated in two numerical examples.