Journal of Data Science

The Lindley distribution has been generalized by many authors in recent years. However, all of the known generalizations so far have restricted tail behaviors. Here, we introduce the most flexible generalization of the Lindley distribution with its tails controlled by two independent parameters. Various mathematical properties of the generalization are derived. Maximum likelihood estimators of its parameters are derived. Fisher’s information matrix and asymptotic confidence intervals for the parameters are given. Finally, a real data application shows that the proposed generalization performs better than all known ones

Abstract:A new generalized two-parameter Lindley distribution which offers more flexibility in modeling lifetime data is proposed and some of its mathematical properties such as the density function, cumulative distribution function, survival function, hazard rate function, mean residual life function, moment generating function, quantile function, moments, Renyi entropy and stochastic ordering are obtained. The maximum likelihood estimation method was used in estimating the parameters of the proposed distribution and a simulation study was carried out to examine the performance and accuracy of the maximum likelihood estimators of the parameters. Finally, an application of the proposed distribution to a real lifetime data set is presented and its fit was compared with the fit attained by some existing lifetime distributions.