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Variance of exponential distribution hooked up in parallel

  • To: mathgroup at smc.vnet.net
  • Subject: [mg36098] Variance of exponential distribution hooked up in parallel
  • From: b90401114 at ms90.ntu.edu.tw (Sam Yang)
  • Date: Wed, 21 Aug 2002 05:52:06 -0400 (EDT)
  • Sender: owner-wri-mathgroup at wolfram.com

I do not use English as mother tongue. If my phrases is strange,
please correct them. I will be grateful to you.

I have a problem:

n component are arranged in parallel, and each of them has a failure
rule given by an exponential  distribution with parameter lamba and
fuctions idependently. That is, the whole system's lifetime, denoted
by T, have the cumulative distribution function (1-e^(-lamba*t))^n,
prove that the variance of T,
Variance[T]=(1/lamda^2)*Sum[(1/i^2),{i,1,n}]

It's not difficult to calculate E[T] and E[T^2], but I can't figure a
way to trasform E[T^2]-(E[t])^2 into the simple form as above.

Thanks very much.



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