Identifying Candidate Distributions

Identifying candidate distributions is both an art and a science. An understanding of the failure process, knowledge of the characteristics of the theoretical distributions, and a statistical analysis of the data will assist in selecting a failure or repair distribution. One suggested approach is given below:

• Construct a histogram of the failure or repair times.
• Compute descriptive statistics.
• Analyse the empirical failure rate.
• Use prior knowledge of the failure process.
• Use properties of the theoretical distribution.
• Construct a probability plot.
• Examine the Goodness of fit.