To survive or to fail: That is the question

Patricia S. Abel, Nozer D. Singpurwalla

Research output: Journal Publications and ReviewsRGC 21 - Publication in refereed journalpeer-review

10 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

A question that naturally arises in life testing is the following: “During the conduct of the test, what would you rather observe, a failure or a survival?” Most people answer this question by saying failure, because intuitively, failures are presumed to provide more information about the parameters of a failure model than survivals. The aim of this article is to point out that such intuition could be misleading and that the answer depends on the particular parameterization that is chosen. The argument is made through the use of Shannon’s measure of information in an experiment, with the exponential as an example. © 1994 Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)18-21
JournalAmerican Statistician
Volume48
Issue number1
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Feb 1994
Externally publishedYes

Research Keywords

  • Accelerated testing
  • Censoring
  • Entropy
  • Exponential distribution
  • Fisher information
  • Life testing
  • Parameterization
  • Shannon information
  • Uncertainty

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'To survive or to fail: That is the question'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this