Small Sample Power of Some Tests of the Constant Failure Rate

Abstract
The exponential distribution is often used in reliability work to describe the distribution of time to “chance” failure and is characterized by a constant failure rate. In this paper the small sample powers are compared for four test statistics for the hypothesis of constant failure rate vs. the hypothesis of non-constant failure rate. The tests are compared for samples of size n = 10(5)50 using the Weibull distribution for the alternative distribution. The shape parameter of the Weibull is varied from 0.5 to 2.5. For the two test statistics which involve arbitrary grouping of the data the effect of group size and number was also examined.