Alpha–beta-power family of distributions with applications to exponential distribution

Abstract

This article proposes a new way to increase the flexibility of a family of statistical distributions by adding two additional parameters. The newly proposed family is called the alpha–beta power transformation family of distributions. A specific model, the alpha–beta power exponential distribution, was thoroughly investigated. The hazard rates of the proposed distribution can be decreasing, bathtub-shaped, and unimodal. The derived structural features of the proposed model include explicit formulations for the quantiles, the moments, the moment-generating function, and the incomplete and conditional moments. In addition, estimates of maximum likelihood, least squares, weighted least squares, and minimum distance of Cramér von Mises, von Anderson–Darling, and right-tail Anderson–Darling are obtained for the unknown parameters. Two real data sets were examined to demonstrate the usefulness of the proposed approach.

Keywords

• Exponential distribution
• Bathtub shape
• Moments
• Maximum likelihood estimation