Selecting the Best Population Using a Test for Equality Based on Minimal Wilcoxon Rank-sum Precedence Statistic

In this paper, we first give an overview of the precedence-type test procedures. Then we propose a nonparametric test based on early failures for the equality of two life-time distributions against two alternatives concerning the best population. This procedure utilizes the minimal Wilcoxon rank-sum precedence statistic (Ng and Balakrishnan, 2002, 2004) which can determine the difference between populations based on early (100q%) failures. Hence, this procedure can be useful in life-testing experiments in biological as well as industrial settings. After proposing the test procedure, we derive the exact null distribution of the test statistic in the two-sample case with equal or unequal sample sizes. We also present the exact probability of correct selection under the Lehmann alternative. Then, we generalize the test procedure to the k-sample situation. Critical values for some sample sizes are presented. Next, we examine the performance of this test procedure under a location-shift alternative through Monte Carlo simulations. Two examples are presented to illustrate our test procedure with selecting the best population as an objective.