New Flexible Asymmetric Log-Birnbaum-Saunders Nonlinear Regression Model with Diagnostic Analysis

A nonlinear log-Birnbaum-Saunders regression model with additive errors is introduced. It is assumed that the error term follows a flexible sinh-normal distribution, and therefore it can be used to describe a variety of asymmetric, unimodal, and bimodal situations. This is a novelty since there are few papers dealing with nonlinear models with asymmetric errors and, even more, there are few able to fit a bimodal behavior. Influence diagnostics and martingale-type residuals are proposed to assess the effect of minor perturbations on the parameter estimates, check the fitted model, and detect possible outliers. A simulation study for the Michaelis-Menten model is carried out, covering a wide range of situations for the parameters. Two real applications are included, where the use of influence diagnostics and residual analysis is illustrated.