BAYES STOPPING RULES FOR RELIABILITY TESTING WITH THE EXPONENTIAL-DISTRIBUTION

These rules for terminating testing involve achieving specified levels of credibility in both: 1) the probability of the posterior estimate of the exponential scale-parameter, theta, after some, m, of the units have been tested, and 2) the mean of the probability of theta over the remaining units, when viewed pessimistically. Sample decision tables and a numerical example illustrate both the sequential & batch testing cases. Large savings in test times can be achieved whenever the first m units present strong evidence in favor of either hypothesis (H0: theta = theta0 vs H-1: theta = theta1, theta1 < theta0).