Structure of hybrid censoring schemes and its implications

Abstract

In this paper, structural properties of (progressive) hybrid censoring schemes are established by studying the possible data scenarios resulting from the hybrid censoring scheme. The results illustrate that the distributions of hybrid censored random variables can be immediately derived from the cases of Type-I and Type-II censored data. Furthermore, it turns out that results in likelihood and Bayesian inference are also obtained directly which explains the similarities present in the probabilistic and statistical analysis of these censoring schemes. The power of the approach is illustrated by applying the approach to the quite complex unified Type-II (progressive) hybrid censoring scheme. Finally, it is shown that the approach is not restricted to (progressively Type-II censored) order statistics and that it can be extended to almost any kind of ordered data.