A Conjugate Class of Utility Functions for Sequential Decision Problems.

The use of the conjugacy property for members of the exponential family of distributions is commonplace within Bayesian statistical analysis, allowing for tractable and simple solutions to problems of inference. However, despite a shared motivation, there has been little previous development of a similar property for using utility functions within a Bayesian decision analysis. As such, this article explores a class of utility functions that appear to be reasonable for modeling the preferences of a decisionmaker in many real-life situations, but that also permit a tractable and simple analysis within sequential decision problems.

Bayesian Inference for Reliability of Systems and Networks Using the Survival Signature.

The concept of survival signature has recently been introduced as an alternative to the signature for reliability quantification of systems. While these two concepts are closely related for systems consisting of a single type of component, the survival signature is also suitable for systems with multiple types of component, which is not the case for the signature. This also enables the use of the survival signature for reliability of networks. In this article, we present the use of the survival signature for reliability quantification of systems and networks from a Bayesian perspective. We assume that data are available on tested components that are exchangeable with those in the actual system or network of interest. These data consist of failure times and possibly right-censoring times. We present both a nonparametric and parametric approach.