Statistical analysis of interval and imprecise data : applications in the analysis of reliability field data

The analysis of field lifetime data is much more complicated than the analysis of the results of reliability laboratory tests. In the paper we present an overview of the most important problems of the statistical analysis of field lifetime data, and present their solutions known from literature. When the input information is partial or imprecise, we propose to use interval arithmetics for the calculation of bounds on reliability characteristics of interest. When this information can be described in a more informative fuzzy form, we can generalize our interval-valued results to their fuzzy equivalents.