Burr type III is an important distribution used to model the failure time data. The paper addresses the problem of estimation of parameters of the Burr type III distribution based on maximum likelihood estimation (MLE) when the samples are left censored. As the closed form expression for the MLEs of the parameters cannot be derived, the approximate solutions have been obtained through iterative procedures. An extensive simulation study has been carried out to investigate the performance of the estimators with respect to sample size, censoring rate and true parametric values. A real life example has also been presented. The study revealed that the proposed estimators are consistent and capable of providing efficient results under small to moderate samples. Pak.j.stat.oper.res. Vol.XI No.4 2015 pp497-512 498
Materials and MethodsThis section contains the derivation of maximum likelihood estimates, elements of Fisher information matrix, variance covariance matrix and confidence intervals for the parameters of the Burr type iii distribution under left censored samples. The limiting behavior of the Fisher information matrix has also been discussed.
Maximum likelihood estimationBased on the left censored sample the likelihood function along with maximum likelihood estimators of the parameters of the Burr type iii distribution have been On Maximum Likelihood Estimation for Left Censored Burr Type III Distribution Pak.j.stat.oper.res. Vol.XI No.4 2015 pp497-512 499 discussed in the following. Let 1 ... rn XX be the last nr ordered statistics from the Burr type iii distribution. Then, the likelihood function for the sample of nr left censored sample can be defined as: