Computation approaches for parameter estimation of Weibull distribution

Abstract

This paper examines the estimation comparison of two methods for Weibull parameters, one is the maximum likelihood method and the other is the least squares method. A numerical simulation study is carried out to understand performance of the two methods. Based on sample root mean square errors, we make a comparison between the two computation approaches. We find that the least squares method significantly outperforms the maximum likelihood when the sample size is small.