Availability PDF

Hi Everybody,

I am trying to find a probability distribution function (PDF) which can represent the availability of a certain component.

I get this availability data from my model. The model does a Monte-Carlo simulation and because I am using a random process to simulate failures on this component, I get an availability value from each run of the simulation.

Plotting the availability as a PDF makes possible to evaluate the confidence intervals of the output of my model.

The problem is that there's no such thing as availability greater than 100% or smaller than 0% and the distribution should take this into consideration.

I tried using the interactive tool called DFITTOOL to find a good fit, but non of them fulfill the rule previous described.

In the x-axis I want to show the availability values (0-100%) and on the y-axis, the probability of having a certain Availability. (The maximum of the distribution should be the mean Availability vector)

Any ideas are welcome!

Cheers,

Pedro Cavaco

[Andrew Newell]

Do you have the Statistics Toolbox?

[Pedro Cavaco]

Yes I do.

I am using Matlab v7.3.0

[Andrew Newell]

Sorry, I didn't read your question closely enough.

Answer 1

[Andrew Newell]

A PDF doesn't have to be restricted to 100% (or 1, as I usually think of it) - as long as the integral of the PDF is 1, it's o.k. You may be thinking of a CDF, which should increase steadily from 0 to 1. So I'd go back to dfittool and fit the data to a CDF.

[Pedro Cavaco]

A simple Histogram will do it.

Thank you for the hint, it did help!