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Abstract:
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Modern technology has made it possible for the wide-spread use of Bayesian methods in reliability applications. Bayesian methods, however, remain controversial in reliability (and other applications) because of the concern about where the needed prior distributions should come from. There are, however, many applications where engineers have solid prior information about certain aspects of their reliability problems based on physics of failure or previous experience with the same failure mechanism. Examples include imprecise knowledge about the activation energy in a temperature-accelerated life test or about the Weibull shape parameter in the analysis of fatigue failure data. In such applications, the use of Bayesian methods offers an appropriate compromise between assuming that such quantities are known and assuming that nothing is known.
Discussion might focus on the important conceptual ideas behind the use of Bayesian methods, on practical concerns for implementation and use of Bayesian methods, and on examples. Also, whose prior information should we use and the kinds of information that can and should be elicited from experts.
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