Statistics for Maintenance Modelling: Continuous Lifetime Distributions 2

# Example of Fitting the Gamma Distribution to Reliability Data¤

22 patients with cancer were given drug and radiation therapy. Three patients left the treatment course - at days 79, 82 and 446. The uncensored survival (death) times were 30, 67, 95, 148, 170, 171, 176, 193, 200, 221, 243, 261, 262, 263, 399, 414, 446, 464 and 777 days.

If the relatively small number of censored observations are ignored, then the chart shows the reliability (survival) function along with that of the gamma distribution with parameters N = 2.82 and = 0.01.

This data is taken from Cox (1984).