• DocumentCode
    1495154
  • Title

    A new explanation of decreasing failure rate of a mixture of exponentials

  • Author

    Mi, Jie

  • Author_Institution
    Florida Int. Univ., Miami, FL, USA
  • Volume
    47
  • Issue
    4
  • fYear
    1998
  • fDate
    12/1/1998 12:00:00 AM
  • Firstpage
    460
  • Lastpage
    462
  • Abstract
    It is well known that the mixture of exponential distributions has a decreasing failure rate, even though each component in the mixture has a constant failure rate. This result is elegant but sometimes seen as a paradox. This paper shows that the proportion of strong (weak) subpopulation with small (large) failure rates in the mixture increases (decreases) as time passes. Based on this fact, a non-Bayes explanation is given for the mixture of exponentials to have a decreasing failure rate
  • Keywords
    exponential distribution; failure analysis; constant failure rate; decreasing failure rate; exponential distributions mixture; non-Bayes explanation; Density functional theory; Density measurement; Exponential distribution; Integrated circuit modeling; Measurement standards; Predictive models; Stochastic processes; Time measurement;
  • fLanguage
    English
  • Journal_Title
    Reliability, IEEE Transactions on
  • Publisher
    ieee
  • ISSN
    0018-9529
  • Type

    jour

  • DOI
    10.1109/24.756090
  • Filename
    756090