ESTIMATION FROM QUASI LIFE-TABLES

A large number of identical components are simultaneously set into ope ration at each of a regular sequence of times and, on failure, a compo nent is instantaneously replaced. The functional form of the distribut ion of the component lifelength is assumed to be known and it is desir ed to estimate the parameters of this distribution. However, no observ ations of the lifelengths of individual components have been recorded: the, only information available is the numbers of components which fa il between successive time points. It is shown how this information, i n conjunction with the theory of recurrent events, may be used to cons truct a nonparametric estimator of the discretised lifelength distribu tion. The latter is then used to estimate the unknown parameters.