Survival distributions arising from two families and generated by transformations

Two families of distributions are introduced and studied within the framework of parametric survival analysis. The families are derived from a general linear form by specifying a function of the survival function with certain restrictions. Distributions within each family are generated by transformations of the survival time variable subject to certain restrictions. Two specific transformations were selected and, thus, four distributions are identified for further study. The distributions have one scale and two shape parameters and include as special cases the exponential, Weibull, log-logistic and Gompertz distributions. One of the new distributions, the modified Weibull, is studied in some detail.

The distributions are developed with an emphasis on those features that data analysts find especially useful for survivorship studies, A wide variety of hazard shapes are available. The survival, density and hazard functions may be written in simple algebraic forms. Parameter estimation is demonstrated using the least squares and maximum likelihood methods. Graphical techniques to assess goodness of fit are demonstrated. The models may be extended to include concmitant information.     

Modified proportional hazard rates and proportional reversed hazard rates models via Marshall–Olkin distribution and some stochastic comparisons

Adding parameters to a known distribution is a useful way of constructing flexible families of distributions. Marshall and Olkin (1997) introduced a general method of adding a shape parameter to a family of distributions. In this paper, based on the Marshall–Olkin extension of a specified distribution, we introduce two new models, referred to as modified proportional hazard rates (MPHR) and modified proportional reversed hazard rates (MPRHR) models, which include as special cases the well-known proportional hazard rates and proportional reversed hazard rates models, respectively. Next, when two sets of random variables follow either the MPHR or the MPRHR model, we establish some stochastic comparisons between the corresponding order statistics based on majorization theory. The results established here extend some well-known results in the literature.     

The exponentiated transmuted Weibull geometric distribution with application in survival analysis

This article introduces a new generalization of the transmuted Weibull distribution introduced by Aryal and Tsokos in 2011. We refer to the new distribution as exponentiated transmuted Weibull geometric (ETWG) distribution. The new model contains 22 lifetime distributions as special cases such as the exponentiated Weibull geometric, complementary Weibull geometric, exponentiated transmuted Weibull, exponentiated Weibull, and Weibull distributions, among others. The properties of the new model are discussed and the maximum likelihood estimation is used to evaluate the parameters. Explicit expressions are derived for the moments and examine the order statistics. To examine the performance of our new model in fitting several data we use two real sets of data, censored and uncensored, and then compare the fitting of the new model with some nested and nonnested models, which provides the best fit to all of the data. A simulation has been performed to assess the behavior of the maximum likelihood estimates of the parameters under the finite samples. This model is capable of modeling various shapes of aging and failure criteria.     

Copules archimédiennes et families de lois bidimensionnelles dont les marges sont données

Every bivariate distribution function with continuous marginals can be represented in terms of a unique copula, that is, in terms of a distribution function on the unit square with uniform marginals. This paper is concerned with a special class of copulas called Archimedean, which includes the uniform representation of many standard bivariate distributions. Conditions are given under which these copulas are stochastically ordered and pointwise limits of sequences of Archimedean copulas are examined. We also provide two new one-parameter families of bivariate distributions which include as limiting cases the Frechet bounds and the independence distribution.     

The heteroscedastic odd log-logistic generalized gamma regression model for censored data

We propose a four-parameter extended generalized gamma model, which includes as special cases some important distributions and it is very useful for modeling lifetime data. A advantage is that it can represent the error distribution for a new heteroscedastic log-odd log-logistic generalized gamma regression model. The proposed heteroscedastic regression model can be used more effectively in the analysis of survival data since it includes as special models several widely-known regression models. Further, for different parameter settings, sample sizes and censoring percentages, various simulations are performed. Overall, the new regression model is very useful to the analysis of real data.     

On families of beta- and generalized gamma-generated distributions and associated inference

A general family of univariate distributions generated by beta random variables, proposed by Jones, has been discussed recently in the literature. This family of distributions possesses great flexibility while fitting symmetric as well as skewed models with varying tail weights. In a similar vein, we define here a family of univariate distributions generated by Stacy’s generalized gamma variables. For these two families of univariate distributions, we discuss maximum entropy characterizations under suitable constraints. Based on these characterizations, an expected ratio of quantile densities is proposed for the discrimination of members of these two broad families of distributions. Several special cases of these results are then highlighted. An alternative to the usual method of moments is also proposed for the estimation of the parameters, and the form of these estimators is particularly amenable to these two families of distributions.     

On the monotonic properties of discrete failure rates

As is well known, the monotonicity of failure rate of a life distribution plays an important role in modeling failure time data. In this paper, we develop techniques for the determination of increasing failure rate (IFR) and decreasing failure rate (DFR) property for a wide class of discrete distributions. Instead of using the failure rate, we make use of the ratio of two consecutive probabilities. The method developed is applied to various well known families of discrete distributions which include the binomial, negative binomial and Poisson distributions as special cases. Finally, a formula is presented to determine explicitly the failure rate of the families considered. This formula is used to determine the failure rate of various classes of discrete distributions. These formulas are explicit but complicated and cannot normally be used to determine the monotonicity of the failure rates.     

A new four-parameter discrete distribution with bathtub and unimodal failure rate

In this paper, a discrete counterpart of the general class of continuous beta-G distributions is introduced. A discrete analog of the beta generalized exponential distribution of Barreto-Souza et al. [2], as an important special case of the proposed class, is studied. This new distribution contains some previously known discrete distributions as well as two new models. The hazard rate function of the new model can be increasing, decreasing, bathtub-shaped and upside-down bathtub. Some distributional and moment properties of the new distribution as well as its order statistics are discussed. Estimation of the parameters is illustrated using the maximum likelihood method and, finally, the model with a real data set is examined.     

A new infinitely divisible discrete distribution with applications to count data modeling

A new discrete distribution involving geometric and discrete Pareto as special cases is introduced. The distribution possesses many interesting properties like decreasing hazard rate, zero vertex uni-modality, over-dispersion, infinite divisibility and compound Poisson representation, which makes the proposed distribution well suited for count data modeling. Other issues including closure property under minima, comparison of its distribution tail with other distributions via actuarial indices are discussed. The method of proportion and maximum likelihood method are presented for parameter estimation. Finally the performance of the proposed distribution over other classical and newly proposed infinitely divisible distributions are discussed.     

The Kumaraswamy-transmuted exponentiated modified Weibull distribution

This article introduces a new generalization of the transmuted exponentiated modified Weibull distribution introduced by Eltehiwy and Ashour in 2013, using Kumaraswamy distribution introduced by Cordeiro and de Castro in 2011. We refer to the new distribution as Kumaraswamy-transmuted exponentiated modified Weibull (Kw-TEMW) distribution. The new model contains 54 lifetime distributions as special cases such as the KumaraswamyWeibull, exponentiated modified Weibull, exponentiated Weibull, exponentiated exponential, transmuted Weibull, Rayleigh, linear failure rate, and exponential distributions, among others. The properties of the new model are discussed and the maximum likelihood estimation is used to evaluate the parameters. Explicit expressions are derived for the moments and examine the order statistics. This model is capable of modeling various shapes of aging and failure criteria.     

Model selection: some generalized distributions

Many models have been used to represent the distributions of random variables in statistics, engineering, business, and the physical and social science. This paper considers two, four-parameter generalized bea distributions that include nearly all the models actually used as special or limiting cases. Properties and the interrelationships among these distributions are considered. Expressions are reported that facilitate parameter estimation and the analysis of associated means, variances, hazard functions and other distributional characteristics.

Estimation procedures corresponding to different data types are considered. Maximum likelihood estimation is used and the value of the likelihood function provides and important criterion for model selection. The relative performance of the various models is compared for several data sets.     

A class of weighted multivariate elliptical models useful for robust analysis of nonnormal and bimodal data

A class of weighted elliptical models useful for analyzing nonnormal and bimodal multivariate data is introduced. It is obtained from the marginal distribution of a centrally truncated multivariate elliptical distribution. As a special case, a finite mixture of weighted multinormal distribution is examined in detail, establishing connections with the multinormal and the finite mixture of multinormal. The special class of distributions is studied from several aspects such as weighting of probability density functions, association with centrally truncated distributions, and a finite scale mixture scheme. The relationships among these aspects are given, and various properties of the class are also discussed. For the inference of the class, an MCMC procedure and its numerical example are provided.     

The compound class of linear failure rate-power series distributions: Model,properties, and applications

In this article, a new class of distributions is introduced, which generalizes the linear failure rate distribution and is obtained by compounding this distribution and power series class of distributions. This new class of distributions is called the linear failure rate-power series distributions and contains some new distributions such as linear failure rate-geometric, linear failure rate-Poisson, linear failure rate-logarithmic, linear failure rate-binomial distributions, and Rayleigh-power series class of distributions. Some former works such as exponential-power series class of distributions, exponential-geometric, exponential-Poisson, and exponential-logarithmic distributions are special cases of the new proposed model. The ability of the linear failure rate-power series class of distributions is in covering five possible hazard rate function, that is, increasing, decreasing, upside-down bathtub (unimodal), bathtub and increasing-decreasing-increasing shaped. Several properties of this class of distributions such as moments, maximum likelihood estimation procedure via an EM-algorithm and inference for a large sample, are discussed in this article. In order to show the flexibility and potentiality, the fitted results of the new class of distributions and some of its submodels are compared using two real datasets.     

The beta generalized linear exponential distribution

In this paper, a new five-parameter lifetime distribution called beta generalized linear exponential distribution (BGLED) is introduced. It includes at least 17 popular sub-models as special cases such as the beta linear exponential, the beta generalized exponential, and the exponentiated generalized linear distributions. Mathematical and statistical properties of the proposed distribution are discussed in details. In particular, explicit expression for the density function, moments, asymptotics distributions for sample extreme statistics, and other statistical measures are obtained. The estimation of the parameters by the method of maximum-likelihood is discussed and the finite sample properties of the maximum-likelihood estimators (MLEs) are investigated numerically. A real data set is used to demonstrate its superior performance fit over several existing popular lifetime models.     

A unified view on skewed distributions arising from selections

Parametric families of multivariate nonnormal distributions have received considerable attention in the past few decades. The authors propose a new definition of a selection distribution that encompasses many existing families of multivariate skewed distributions. Their work is motivated by examples that involve various forms of selection mechanisms and lead to skewed distributions. They give the main properties of selection distributions and show how various families of multivariate skewed distributions, such as the skew‐normal and skew‐elliptical distributions, arise as special cases. The authors further introduce several methods of constructing selection distributions based on linear and nonlinear selection mechanisms.     

Series evaluation of Tweedie exponential dispersion model densities

Exponential dispersion models, which are linear exponential families with a dispersion parameter, are the prototype response distributions for generalized linear models. The Tweedie family comprises those exponential dispersion models with power mean-variance relationships. The normal, Poisson, gamma and inverse Gaussian distributions belong to theTweedie family. Apart from these special cases, Tweedie distributions do not have density functions which can be written in closed form. Instead, the densities can be represented as infinite summations derived from series expansions. This article describes how the series expansions can be summed in an numerically efficient fashion. The usefulness of the approach is demonstrated, but full machine accuracy is shown not to be obtainable using the series expansion method for all parameter values. Derivatives of the density with respect to the dispersion parameter are also derived to facilitate maximum likelihood estimation. The methods are demonstrated on two data examples and compared with with Box-Cox transformations and extended quasi-likelihoood.     

On Two General Classes of Discrete Bivariate Distributions

In this article, we develop two general classes of discrete bivariate distributions. We derive general formulas for the joint distributions belonging to the classes. The obtained formulas for the joint distributions are very general in the sense that new families of distributions can be generated just by specifying the “baseline seed distributions.” The dependence structures of the bivariate distributions belonging to the proposed classes, along with basic statistical properties, are also discussed. New families of discrete bivariate distributions are generated from the classes. Furthermore, to assess the usefulness of the proposed classes, two discrete bivariate distributions generated from the classes are applied to analyze a real dataset and the results are compared with those obtained from conventional models.     

Probabilistic Applications of the Schlömilch Transformation

The Schlömilch transformation, long used by mathematicians for integral evaluation, allows probability mass to be redistributed, thus transforming old distributions to new ones. The transformation is used to introduce some new families of distributions on ⁺. Their general properties are studied, i.e., distributional shape and skewness, moments and inverse moments, hazard function, and random number generation. In general, these distributions are suitable for modeling data where the hazard function initially rises steeply. Their usefulness is illustrated by fitting some human weight data. Besides data fitting, one possible use of the new distributions could be in sensitivity or robustness studies, for example as Bayesian prior distributions.     

Modelling Poisson marked point processes using bivariate mixture transition distributions

A class of bivariate continuous-discrete distributions is proposed to fit Poisson dynamic models in a single unified framework via bivariate mixture transition distributions (BMTDs). Potential advantages of this class over the current models include its ability to capture stretches, bursts and nonlinear patterns characterized by Internet network traffic, high-frequency financial data and many others. It models the inter-arrival times and the number of arrivals (marks) in a single unified model which benefits from the dependence structure of the data. The continuous marginal distributions of this class include as special cases the exponential, gamma, Weibull and Rayleigh distributions (for the inter-arrival times), whereas the discrete marginal distributions are geometric and negative binomial. The conditional distributions are Poisson and Erlang. Maximum-likelihood estimation is discussed and parameter estimates are obtained using an expectation–maximization algorithm, while the standard errors are estimated using the missing information principle. It is shown via real data examples that the proposed BMTD models appear to capture data features better than other competing models.     

Semiparametric inference based on a class of zero-altered distributions

In modeling count data collected from manufacturing processes, economic series, disease outbreaks and ecological surveys, there are usually a relatively large or small number of zeros compared to positive counts. Such low or high frequencies of zero counts often require the use of underdispersed or overdispersed probability models for the underlying data generating mechanism. The commonly used models such as generalized or zero-inflated Poisson distributions are parametric and can usually account for only the overdispersion, but such distributions are often found to be inadequate in modeling underdispersion because of the need for awkward parameter or support restrictions. This article introduces a flexible class of semiparametric zero-altered models which account for both underdispersion and overdispersion and includes other familiar models such as those mentioned above as special cases. Consistency and asymptotic normality of the estimator of the dispersion parameter are derived under general conditions. Numerical support for the performance of the proposed method of inference is presented for the case of common discrete distributions.