On Burr III-Inverse Weibull Distribution with COVID-19 Applications

We introduce a flexible lifetime distribution called Burr III-Inverse Weibull (BIII-IW). The new proposed distribution has well-known sub-models. The BIII-IW density function includes exponential, left-skewed, right-skewed and symmetrical shapes. The BIII-IW model’s failure rate can be monotone and non-monotone depending on the parameter values. To show the importance of the BIII-IW distribution, we establish various mathematical properties such as random number generator, ordinary moments, conditional moments, residual life functions, reliability measures and characterizations. We address the maximum likelihood estimates (MLE) for the BIII-IW parameters and estimate the precision of the maximum likelihood estimators via a simulation study. We consider applications to two COVID-19 data sets to illustrate the potential of the BIII-IW model.