# Fitting a specific distribution to data¶

The module reliability.Fitters provides many probability distribution fitting functions. These functions can be thought of in three categories; non-location shifted distributions [eg. Weibull (α,β)], location shifted distributions [eg. Weibull (α,β,γ)], and special distributions (e.g. Weibull Mixture model). All of the distributions can be fitted to both complete and incomplete (right censored) data. All distributions in the Fitters module are named with their number of parameters (eg. Fit_Weibull_2P uses α,β, whereas Fit_Weibull_3P uses α,β,γ). This is intended to remove ambiguity about what distribution you are fitting.

Distributions are fitted simply by using the desired function and specifying the data as failures or right_censored data. You must have at least as many failures as there are distribution parameters or the fit would be under-constrained. It is generally advisable to have at least 4 data points as the accuracy of the fit is proportional to the amount of data. Once fitted, the results are assigned to an object and the fitted parameters can be accessed by name, as shown in the examples below. The goodness of fit criterions are also available as AICc (Akaike Information Criterion corrected), BIC (Bayesian Information Criterion), AD (Anderson-Darling), and loglik (log-likelihood), though these are more useful when comparing the fit of multiple distributions such as in the Fit_Everything function. As a matter of convenience, each of the modules in Fitters also generates a distribution object that has the parameters of the fitted distribution.

The available functions are:

• Fit_Weibull_2P
• Fit_Weibull_3P
• Fit_Exponential_1P
• Fit_Exponential_2P
• Fit_Gamma_2P
• Fit_Gamma_3P
• Fit_Lognormal_2P
• Fit_Lognormal_3P
• Fit_Loglogistic_2P
• Fit_Loglogistic_3P
• Fit_Normal_2P
• Fit_Gumbel_2P
• Fit_Beta_2P
• Fit_Weibull_Mixture (see the section on this)
• Fit_Weibull_CR (see the section on this)

Note

The Beta distribution is only for data in the range 0 to 1. Specifying data outside of this range will cause an error.

Note

If you have a very large amount of data (>100000 samples) then it is likely that your computer will take significant time to compute the results. This is a limitation of interpreted languages like Python compared to compiled languages like C++ which many commerial reliability software packages are written in. If you have very large volumes of data, you may want to consider using commercial software for faster computation time. The function Fit_Weibull_2P_grouped is designed to accept a dataframe which has multiple occurrences of some values (eg. multiple values all right censored to the same value when the test was ended). Depending on the size of the data set and the amount of grouping in your data, Fit_Weibull_2P_grouped may be much faster than Fit_Weibull_2P and achieve the same level of accuracy. This difference is not noticable if you have less than 10000 samples. For more information, see the example below on using Fit_Weibull_2P_grouped.

Note

Heavily censored data (>99.9% censoring) may result in a failure of the optimizer to find a solution. If you have heavily censored data, you may have a limited failure population problem. It is recommended that you do not try fitting one of these standard distributions to such a dataset as your results (while they may have achieved a successful fit) will be a poor description of your overall population statistic and you risk drawing the wrong conclusions when the wrong model is fitted. The limited failure population model is planned for a future release of reliability, though development on this model is yet to commence. In the meantime, see JMP Pro’s model for Defective Subpopulations.

Note

The confidence intervals are available for all of the standard distributions except for Fit_Gamma_2P, Fit_Gamma_3P and Fit_Beta_2P. This library is being actively developed and it is likely that Gamma and Beta distributions will have confidence intervals added within the next few months.

If you do not know which distribution you want to fit, then please see the section on using the Fit_Everything function which will find the best distribution to describe your data. It is highly recommended that you always try to fit everything and accept the best fit rather than choosing a particular distribution for subjective reasons.

Each of the fitters listed above (except Fit_Weibull_Mixture, Fit_Weibull_CR, and Fit_Weibull_2P_grouped) has the following inputs and outputs:

Inputs:

• failures - an array or list of failure data
• right_censored - an array or list of right censored data. Optional input
• show_probability_plot - True/False. Defaults to True. Produces a probability plot of the failure data and fitted distribution.
• print_results - True/False. Defaults to True. Prints a dataframe of the point estimate, standard error, Lower CI and Upper CI for each parameter.
• method - ‘MLE’ (maximum likelihood estimation), ‘LS’ (least squares estimation), ‘RRX’ (Rank regression on X), ‘RRY’ (Rank regression on Y). LS will perform both RRX and RRY and return the better one. Default is ‘MLE’.
• optimizer - ‘L-BFGS-B’, ‘TNC’, or ‘powell’. Default for <97% censored data is L-BFGS-B and for above 97% censored data the default optimizer is TNC. These are all bound constrained methods. If the bounded method fails, nelder-mead will be used. If nelder-mead fails then the initial guess will be returned with a warning. For more information on optimizers see scipy.
• CI - confidence interval for estimating confidence limits on parameters. Must be between 0 and 1. Default is 0.95 for 95% CI.
• CI_type - time, reliability, None. Default is time. This is the confidence bounds on time or on reliability. Use None to turn off the confidence intervals.
• percentiles - True/False (for default list) or specified list or array of percentiles (0 to 100) to print with the results. These are the percentiles on time based on the specified CI. Not available for Fit_Gamma_2P, Fit_Gamma_3P and Fit_Beta_2P due to confidence intervals not yet implemented.
• force_beta (in Fit_Weibull_2P) or force_sigma (in Fit_Normal_2P and Fit_Lognormal_2P). This allows the user to force the shape parameter to be a set value. Useful for ALT probability plotting. Optional input and only available for Fit_Weibull_2P, Fit_Normal_2P and Fit_Lognormal_2P as these are the distributions typically used in ALT probability plotting.
• keyword argumets are also accepted for the probability plot (eg. color, linestyle, marker)

Outputs (the following example outputs are for the Fit_Weibull_2P distribution but for other distributions the parameter names may be different from alpha and beta):

• alpha - the fitted Weibull_2P alpha parameter
• beta - the fitted Weibull_2P beta parameter
• loglik - Log-Likelihood (as used in Minitab and Reliasoft)
• loglik2 - Log-Likelihood*-2 (as used in JMP Pro)
• AICc - Akaike Information Criterion (goodness of fit statistic)
• BIC - Bayesian Information Criterion (goodness of fit statistic)
• AD - the Anderson-Darling goodness of fit statistic (uses the same formula as Minitab)
• distribution - a Distribution object with the parameters of the fitted distribution
• alpha_SE - the standard error (sqrt(variance)) of the parameter
• beta_SE - the standard error (sqrt(variance)) of the parameter. This will be ‘’ if the shape parameter has been forced to a set value.
• Cov_alpha_beta - the covariance between the parameters. This will be ‘’ for Fit_Expon_1P or if the shape parameter has been forced to a set value.
• alpha_upper - the upper CI estimate of the parameter
• alpha_lower - the lower CI estimate of the parameter
• beta_upper - the upper CI estimate of the parameter. This will be ‘’ if the shape parameter has been forced to a set value.
• beta_lower - the lower CI estimate of the parameter. This will be ‘’ if the shape parameter has been forced to a set value.
• results - a dataframe of the results (point estimate, standard error, Lower CI and Upper CI for each parameter)
• goodness_of_fit - a dataframe of the goodness of fit values (Log-likelihood, AICc, BIC, AD).
• percentiles - a dataframe of the percentiles.
• probability_plot - the axes handle for the probability plot (only returned if show_probability_plot = True).

## Example 1¶

To learn how we can fit a distribution, we will start by using a simple example with 30 failure times. These times were generated from a Weibull distribution with α=50, β=3. Note that the output also provides the confidence intervals and standard error of the parameter estimates. The probability plot is generated be default (you will need to specify plt.show() to show it). See the section on probability plotting to learn how to interpret this plot.

from reliability.Fitters import Fit_Weibull_2P
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt
data = [58,75,36,52,63,65,22,17,28,64,23,40,73,45,52,36,52,60,13,55,82,55,34,57,23,42,66,35,34,25] # made using Weibull Distribution(alpha=50,beta=3)
wb = Fit_Weibull_2P(failures=data)
plt.show()

'''
Results from Fit_Weibull_2P (95% CI):
Analysis method: Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE)
Failures / Right censored: 30/0 (0% right censored)

Parameter  Point Estimate  Standard Error  Lower CI  Upper CI
Alpha          51.858         3.55628   45.3359   59.3183
Beta         2.80086         0.41411   2.09624   3.74233

Goodness of fit    Value
Log-likelihood -129.063
AICc   262.57
BIC  264.928
'''


The above probability plot is the typical way to visualise how the CDF (the blue line) models the failure data (the black points). If you would like to view the failure points alongside the PDF, CDF, SF, HF, or CHF without the axis being scaled then you can generate the scatter plot using the function plot_points which is available within reliability.Probability_plotting. In the example below we create some data, then fit a Weibull distribution to the data (ensuring we turn off the probability plot). From the fitted distribution object we plot the Survival Function (SF). We then use plot_points to generate a scatter plot of the plotting positions for the survival function.

For the function plot_points the inputs are:

• failures - an array or list of failure data
• right_censored - an array or list of right censored data. Optional input
• func - the function to be plotted. Must be ‘PDF’, ‘CDF’, ‘SF’, ‘HF’, or ‘CHF’. Default is ‘CDF’. Note that the options for ‘PDF’ and ‘HF’ will look much more scattered as they are found using the integral of a non-continuous function.
• a - this is the plotting heuristic. Default is 0.3. See probability plotting and Wikipedia for more details.
• keywords for the scatter plot are also accepted.

## Example 2¶

This example shows how to use the plot_points function.

from reliability.Distributions import Weibull_Distribution
from reliability.Fitters import Fit_Weibull_2P
from reliability.Probability_plotting import plot_points
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

data = Weibull_Distribution(alpha=25,beta=4).random_samples(30)
weibull_fit = Fit_Weibull_2P(failures=data,show_probability_plot=False,print_results=False)
weibull_fit.distribution.SF(label='Fitted Distribution',color='steelblue')
plot_points(failures=data,func='SF',label='failure data',color='red',alpha=0.7)
plt.legend()
plt.show()


## Example 3¶

It is beneficial to see the effectiveness of the fitted distribution in comparison to the original distribution. In this example, we are creating 500 samples from a Weibull distribution and then we will right censor all of the data above our chosen threshold. Then we are fitting a Weibull_3P distribution to the data. Note that we need to specify “show_probability_plot=False, print_results=False” in the Fit_Weibull_3P to prevent the normal outputs of the fitting function from being displayed.

from reliability.Distributions import Weibull_Distribution
from reliability.Fitters import Fit_Weibull_3P
from reliability.Other_functions import make_right_censored_data, histogram
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

a = 30
b = 2
g = 20
threshold=55
dist = Weibull_Distribution(alpha=a, beta=b, gamma=g) # generate a weibull distribution
raw_data = dist.random_samples(500, seed=2)  # create some data from the distribution
data = make_right_censored_data(raw_data,threshold=threshold) #right censor some of the data
print('There are', len(data.right_censored), 'right censored items.')
wbf = Fit_Weibull_3P(failures=data.failures, right_censored=data.right_censored, show_probability_plot=False, print_results=False)  # fit the Weibull_3P distribution
print('Fit_Weibull_3P parameters:\nAlpha:', wbf.alpha, '\nBeta:', wbf.beta, '\nGamma', wbf.gamma)
histogram(raw_data,white_above=threshold) # generates the histogram using optimal bin width and shades the censored part as white
dist.PDF(label='True Distribution')  # plots the true distribution's PDF
wbf.distribution.PDF(label='Fit_Weibull_3P', linestyle='--')  # plots to PDF of the fitted Weibull_3P
plt.title('Fitting comparison for failures and right censored data')
plt.legend()
plt.show()

'''
There are 118 right censored items.
Fit_Weibull_3P parameters:
Alpha: 28.874785735505373
Beta: 2.029498089503753
Gamma 20.383929097802667
'''


## Example 4¶

As another example, we will fit a Gamma_2P distribution to some partially right censored data. To provide a comparison of the fitting accuracy as the number of samples increases, we will do the same experiment with varying sample sizes. The results highlight that the accuracy of the fit is proportional to the amount of samples, so you should always try to obtain more data if possible.

from reliability.Distributions import Gamma_Distribution
from reliability.Fitters import Fit_Gamma_2P
from reliability.Other_functions import make_right_censored_data, histogram
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

a = 30
b = 4
threshold = 180  # this is used when right censoring the data
trials = [10, 100, 1000, 10000]
subplot_id = 221
plt.figure(figsize=(9, 7))
for sample_size in trials:
dist = Gamma_Distribution(alpha=a, beta=b)
raw_data = dist.random_samples(sample_size, seed=2)  # create some data. Seeded for repeatability
data = make_right_censored_data(raw_data, threshold=threshold)  # right censor the data
gf = Fit_Gamma_2P(failures=data.failures, right_censored=data.right_censored, show_probability_plot=False, print_results=False)  # fit the Gamma_2P distribution
print('\nFit_Gamma_2P parameters using', sample_size, 'samples:', '\nAlpha:', gf.alpha, '\nBeta:', gf.beta)  # print the results
plt.subplot(subplot_id)
histogram(raw_data,white_above=threshold) # plots the histogram using optimal bin width and shades the right censored part white
dist.PDF(label='True')  # plots the true distribution
gf.distribution.PDF(label='Fitted', linestyle='--')  # plots the fitted Gamma_2P distribution
plt.title(str(str(sample_size) + ' samples\n' + r'$\alpha$ error: ' + str(round(abs(gf.alpha - a) / a * 100, 2)) + '%\n' + r'$\beta$ error: ' + str(round(abs(gf.beta - b) / b * 100, 2)) + '%'))
plt.ylim([0, 0.012])
plt.xlim([0, 500])
plt.legend()
subplot_id += 1
plt.subplots_adjust(left=0.11, bottom=0.08, right=0.95, top=0.89, wspace=0.33, hspace=0.58)
plt.show()

'''
Fit_Gamma_2P parameters using 10 samples:
Alpha: 19.42603055922681
Beta: 4.690128012497702

Fit_Gamma_2P parameters using 100 samples:
Alpha: 36.26422284804005
Beta: 3.292936597081274

Fit_Gamma_2P parameters using 1000 samples:
Alpha: 28.82498806044018
Beta: 4.0629588362011315

Fit_Gamma_2P parameters using 10000 samples:
Alpha: 30.301283878512486
Beta: 3.960085127204732
'''


## Example 5¶

To obtain details of the percentiles (lower estimate, point estimate, upper estimate), we can use the percentiles input for each Fitter. In this example, we will create some data and fit a Weibull_2P distribution. When percentiles are requested the results printed includes both the table of results and the table of percentiles. Setting percentiles as True will use a default list of percentiles (as shown in the first output). Alternatively we can specify the exact percentiles to use (as shown in the second output). The use of the crosshairs function is also shown which was used to annotate the plot manually. Note that the percentiles provided are the percentiles of the confidence intervals on time. Percentiles for the confidence intervals on reliability are not implemented, but can be accessed manually from the plots using the crosshairs function when confidence intervals on reliability have been plotted.

from reliability.Distributions import Weibull_Distribution
from reliability.Fitters import Fit_Weibull_2P
from reliability.Other_functions import crosshairs
import matplotlib.pyplot as plt

dist = Weibull_Distribution(alpha=500, beta=6)
data = dist.random_samples(50, seed=1) # generate some data
# this will produce the large table of percentiles below the first table of results
Fit_Weibull_2P(failures=data, percentiles=True, CI=0.8, show_probability_plot=False)
print('----------------------------------------------------------')
# repeat the process but using specified percentiles.
output = Fit_Weibull_2P(failures=data, percentiles=[5, 50, 95], CI=0.8)
# these points have been manually annotated on the plot using crosshairs
crosshairs()
plt.show()

#the values from the percentiles dataframe can be extracted as follows:
lower_estimates = output.percentiles['Lower Estimate'].values
print('Lower estimates:',lower_estimates)

'''
Results from Fit_Weibull_2P (80% CI):
Analysis method: Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE)
Failures / Right censored: 50/0 (0% right censored)

Parameter  Point Estimate  Standard Error  Lower CI  Upper CI
Alpha         489.117         13.9217   471.597   507.288
Beta         5.20799         0.58927   4.50501   6.02067

Goodness of fit    Value
Log-likelihood -301.658
AICc  607.571
BIC   611.14

Table of percentiles (80% CI bounds on time):
Percentile  Lower Estimate  Point Estimate  Upper Estimate
1         175.215         202.212         233.368
5         250.235         276.521         305.569
10         292.686         317.508         344.435
20         344.277         366.719         390.623
25         363.578          385.05          407.79
50          437.69         455.879         474.823
75          502.94         520.776         539.244
80         517.547         535.916         554.937
90         553.267         574.067          595.65
95         580.174          603.82          628.43
99         625.681         655.789         687.347

----------------------------------------------------------
Results from Fit_Weibull_2P (80% CI):
Analysis method: Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE)
Failures / Right censored: 50/0 (0% right censored)

Parameter  Point Estimate  Standard Error  Lower CI  Upper CI
Alpha         489.117         13.9217   471.597   507.288
Beta         5.20799         0.58927   4.50501   6.02067

Goodness of fit    Value
Log-likelihood -301.658
AICc  607.571
BIC   611.14

Table of percentiles (80% CI bounds on time):
Percentile  Lower Estimate  Point Estimate  Upper Estimate
5         250.235         276.521         305.569
50          437.69         455.879         474.823
95         580.174          603.82          628.43

Lower estimates: [250.23463128 437.68995083 580.17387075]
'''


## Using Fit_Weibull_2P_grouped for large data sets¶

The function Fit_Weibull_2P_grouped is effectively the same as Fit_Weibull_2P, except for a few small differences that make it more efficient at handling grouped data sets. Grouped data sets are typically found in very large data that may be heavily censored. The function includes a choice between two optimizers and a choice between two initial guess methods for the initial guess that is given to the optimizer. These help in cases where the data is very heavily censored (>99.9%). The defaults for these options are usually the best but you may want to try different options to see which one gives you the lowest log-likelihood. The inputs and outputs are the same as for Fit_Weibull_2P except for the following:

• initial_guess_method - ‘scipy’ OR ‘least squares’. Default is ‘least squares’. Both do not take into account censored data but scipy uses MLE, and least squares is least squares regression of the plotting positions. Least squares proved more accurate during testing.
• optimizer - ‘L-BFGS-B’ or ‘TNC’. These are both bound-constrained methods. If the bounded method fails, nelder-mead will be used. If nelder-mead fails then the initial guess will be returned with a warning. For more information on optimizers see the scipy documentation.
• dataframe - a pandas dataframe of the appropriate format. The requirements of the input dataframe are: The column titles MUST be ‘category’, ‘time’, ‘quantity’. The category values MUST be ‘F’ for failure or ‘C’ for censored (right censored). The time values are the failure or right censored times. The quantity is the number of items at that time. The quantity must be specified for all values even if the quantity is 1.

## Example 6¶

The following example shows how we can use Fit_Weibull_2P_grouped to fit a Weibull_2P distribution to grouped data from a spreadsheet (shown below) on the Windows desktop. If you would like to access this data, it is available in reliability.Datasets.electronics and includes both the failures and right_censored format as well as the dataframe format. An example of this is provided in the code below (option 2).

from reliability.Fitters import Fit_Weibull_2P_grouped
import pandas as pd

# option 1 for importing this dataset (from an excel file on your desktop)
filename = 'C:\\Users\\Current User\\Desktop\\data.xlsx'

## option 2 for importing this dataset (from the dataset in reliability)
# from reliability.Datasets import electronics
# df = electronics().dataframe

Fit_Weibull_2P_grouped(dataframe=df, show_probability_plot=False)

'''
time  quantity category
0     220         1        F
1     179         1        F
2     123         1        F
3     146         1        F
4     199         1        F
5     181         1        F
6     191         1        F
7     216         1        F
8       1         1        F
9      73         1        F
10  44798       817        C
11  62715       823        C
12  81474       815        C
13  80632       813        C
14  62716       804        C

Results from Fit_Weibull_2P_grouped (95% CI):
Analysis method: Maximum Likelihood Estimation (MLE)
Failures / Right censored: 10/4072 (99.75502% right censored)

Parameter  Point Estimate  Standard Error    Lower CI    Upper CI
Alpha     3.90796e+21     3.95972e+22 9.27216e+12 1.64709e+30
Beta        0.155525       0.0404882   0.0933691    0.259057

Goodness of fit    Value
Log-likelihood -144.617
AICc  293.238
BIC  305.864