Hazard Function

The hazard function (also known as the failure rate) is the ratio of the probability density function to the survival function:

The hazard function is used in reliability applications to describe the instantaneous failure rate at any point in time.

If the hazard function is constant, then the failures occur with equal frequency during any equal period of time. The exponential failure distribution has a constant hazard rate. For other distributions, the hazard function is not constant, so the failure rate varies with time:

This function is supported for continuous distributions only.

See also:

• Creating Graphs