Related Experiment Video
Updated: May 16, 2025

Author Spotlight: Advancing Hepatic Fibrosis Diagnosis Using Magnetic Resonance Elastography and AI
Published on: July 21, 2023
Robust estimation of the three parameter Weibull distribution for addressing outliers in reliability analysis
Muhammad Aslam Mohd Safari1,2, Nurulkamal Masseran3, Muhammad Hilmi Abdul Majid4
1Department of Mathematics and Statistics, Faculty of Science, Universiti Putra Malaysia, 43400 UPM, Serdang, Selangor, Malaysia. aslam.safari@upm.edu.my.
Abstract:
Accurate estimation techniques are crucial in statistical modeling and reliability analysis, which have significant applications across various industries. The three-parameter Weibull distribution is a widely used tool in this context, but traditional estimation methods often struggle with outliers, resulting in unreliable parameter estimates. To address this issue, our study introduces a robust estimation technique for the three-parameter Weibull distribution, leveraging the probability integral transform and specifically employing the Weibull survival function for the transformation, with a focus on complete data. This method is designed to enhance robustness while maintaining computational simplicity, making it easy to implement. Through extensive simulation studies, we demonstrate the effectiveness and resilience of our proposed estimator in the presence of outliers. The findings indicate that this new technique significantly improves the accuracy of Weibull parameter estimates, thereby expanding the toolkit available to researchers and practitioners in reliability data analysis. Furthermore, we apply the proposed method to real-world reliability datasets, confirming its practical utility and effectiveness in overcoming the limitations of existing estimation methodologies in the presence of outliers.
Related Concept Videos
Parametric Survival Analysis: Weibull and Exponential Methods
Weibull Distribution
The Weibull distribution is a flexible model used in parametric survival analysis. It can handle both increasing and decreasing hazard rates, depending on its shape parameter...
Quantifying and Rejecting Outliers: The Grubbs Test
Detection of Gross Error: The Q Test
Outliers and Influential Points
What Are Outliers?
The z score is used to find outliers or unusual values. It should be noted that any values beyond -2 and +2 are...
Modified Boxplots
However, the box plot does not tell the reader about outliers - values that lie far from the center of the data. We can modify the standard box and whisker plot to identify the outliers and visualize the actual spread of the data in a sample.
Initially, we calculate the adjusted...

