What inspired this Wish List Request?
A conversation with a customer (Ken Bertagnolli, the new owner of Objective Experiments), highlighted a few issues with the very excellent Reliability Explorers. The issues all pivot on a need to know more about statistics and distributions than most platforms require in order to be successful.
Please describe the new or improved feature or solution you would like to see.
Broadly, if we could improve the Reliability Sample Size Explorers to not require the user to know specific statistical concepts, then the explorers would be more intuitive and usable. A few examples:
Reliability Life Testing:
It's not immediately clear how to come up with the Relative Width number to input.
- The JMP Help says that it is "The width of the interval relative to the magnitude of the estimate."
- In order to find this number, the user has to make calculations, which is kind of the opposite of JMP's general approach. For example, to find ± 100 hour limits for the 20th quantile for a Weibull distribution, the user would potentially have to know the Weibull Quantile () function.
- It would be better if there was a simple input window (or profiler!) that could be used to interactively determine this.
Parametric Reliability Demonstration:
It's not clear what the Shape Parameter is.
- JMP Help says that it "Specifies the scale parameter for the failure time distribution."
- Given that sometimes distributions are determined by location and scale, and sometimes by scale and shape, listing a Shape Parameter that is really the scale parameter can be confusing.
- Also, according to this discussion, the user should enter 1/scale.
The broad suggestion, then, is to take these already amazing explorers and make them even easier to use, by including more explanations in the hover tips, including places to create the calculations, more profilers, etc. I'd also suggest putting a few examples in the help, so if something isn't clear to the user, they can better understand how to use each field in a context-specific setting.
What would the value be to you and/or other users if this new feature is provided?
Easier to get the right answers, without needing as much statistical background.
Is this an external customer request?
Yes. Ken Bertagnolli, Objective Experiments. ken@objexp.com
Is there a competitive software package that has this feature or solution that we should be aware of?
no.
Will this impact a renewal, expansion, or adoption at a customer, and does this put an account at risk if we do not address this?
No.
Thank you for submitting this request!
