A Stochastic EM Algorithm for Progressively Censored Data Analysis

Progressive censoring technique is useful in lifetime data analysis. Simple approaches to progressive data analysis are crucial for its widespread adoption by reliability engineers. This study develops an efficient yet easy-to-implement framework for analyzing progressively censored data by making use of the stochastic EM algorithm. On the basis of this framework, we develop specific stochastic EM procedures for several popular lifetime models. These procedures are shown to be very simple. We then demonstrate the applicability and efficiency of the stochastic EM algorithm by a fatigue life data set with proper modification and by a progressively censored data set from a life test on hard disk drives. Copyright (c) 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.