COMPUTING PARTIAL EXPECTATIONS FROM TABLES

Many applications in inventory control, reliability engineering and pr eventive maintenance involve frequent calculations of probabilities an d partial expectations. In the design of high-volume computer-based ap plications recourse to internal tables may therefore be preferable to an import of statistical packages. While interpolation in tabulated cd f's will often prove sufficiently accurate from the point of view of s tatistical representation of the underlying problem, tables of compati ble (partial) expectations need to be constructed with regard to the m ethod of interpolation employed. The mathematics for establishing such tables differ from standard textbook procedures. This paper develops appropriate expressions in general terms and gives explicit results fo r the Gamma family of distributions, which is of particular interest i n the areas of application mentioned.