A new method for interval estimation of the mean of the Gamma distribution

The two parameter Gamma distribution is widely used for modeling lifetime distributions in reliability theory. There is much literature on the inference on the individual parameters of the Gamma distribution, namely the shape parameter k and the scale parameter theta when the other parameter is known. However, usually the reliability professionals have a major interest in making statistical inference about the mean lifetime mu, which equals the product thetak for the Gamma distribution. The problem of inference on the mean mu when both parameters theta and k are unknown has been less attended in the literature for the Gamma distribution. In this paper we review the existing methods for interval estimation of mu. A comparative study in this paper indicates that the existing methods are either too approximate and yield less reliable confidence intervals or are computationally quite complicated and need advanced computing facilities. We propose a new simple method for interval estimation of the Gamma mean and compare its performance with the existing methods. The comparative study showed that the newly proposed computationally simple optimum power normal approximation method works best even for small sample sizes.