The role of weighted distributions in stochastic modeling

Abstract

C. R. Rao pointed out that “The role of statistical methodology is to extract the relevant information from a given sample to answer specific questions about the parent population” and raised the question “What population does a sample represent”? Wrong specification can lead to invalid inference giving rise to a third kind of error. Rao introduced the concept of weighted distributions as a method of adjustment applicable to many situations. In this paper, we study the relationship between the weighted distributions and the parent distributions in the context of reliability and life testing. These relationships depend on the nature of the weight function and give rise to interesting connections between the different ageing criteria of the two distributions. As special cases, the length biased distribution, the equilibrium distribution of the backward and forward recurrence times and the residual life distribution, which frequently arise in practice, are studied and their relationships with the original distribution are examined. Their survival functions, failure rates and mean residual life functions are compared and some characterization results are established.