Parameter estimation of the Weibull Distribution; Comparison of the Least-Squares Method and the Maximum Likelihood estimation

Abstract

Weibull distribution is a very useful distribution in survival analysis, lifetime analysis, and reliability analysis. Several methods have been proposed to estimate the parameters of different distributions such as the method of moment, maximum likelihood, etc. In this paper, we analyze the 2-parameter Weibull distribution by simulating data on failure times of a product using the Monte Carlo approach and estimating the parameters of the distribution using the maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) and the least-squares method (LS). These methods were also investigated through applications in reliability analysis. The two approaches of estimating the parameters were compared, and the MLE obtained better performance than the least-squares method when the results for the parameters were assessed using the goodness of fit measures. Also, we obtained the asymptotic distribution of the MLE which was asymptotically efficient as the sample size increases. The inverse of the Fisher’s information matrix which is the asymptotic variance-covariance matrix was also obtained.