Template:Test of Life Comparison

Tests of Comparison
It is often desirable to be able to compare two sets of reliability or life data in order to determine which of the data sets has a more favorable life distribution. The data sets could be from two alternate designs, manufacturers, lots, assembly lines, etc. Many methods are available in statistical literature for doing this when the units come from a complete sample (i.e., a sample with no censoring). This process becomes a little more difficult when dealing with data sets that have censoring, or when trying to compare two data sets that have different distributions. In general, the problem boils down to that of being able to determine any statistically significant difference between the two samples of potentially censored data from two possibly different populations. This section discusses some of the methods available in Weibull++ that are applicable to censored data.