The Weibull distribution is named after the Swedish engineer Waloddi Weibull who used the distribution in a paper on the breaking strength of materials. As an example of Stigler's law of epynomy, Weibull was not the first to apply the distribution: Paul Rosen and Erich Rammler used it six years earlier to study the fineness of powdered coal. The distribution is used in areas as diverse as engineering (for reliability analysis), biostatistics (lifetime modeling and survival analysis), and psychology (for modeling response times).

The three-parameter Weibull cumulative distribution function (CDF) for a random variable T is defined as follows:

with θ > 0 and β > 0. The density function f(t) equals

In the remainder of this entry, it is assumed that the distribution or density function can ...

  • Loading...
locked icon

Sign in to access this content

Get a 30 day FREE TRIAL

  • Watch videos from a variety of sources bringing classroom topics to life
  • Read modern, diverse business cases
  • Explore hundreds of books and reference titles