February 28, 2011

MTBF (Mean Time Between Failures) Explained

Just found an interesting description from  Kevin Daly (http://www.ece.cmu.edu/~ganger/ece546.spring02/readings/mtbf.description).

"What does MTBF have to do with lifetime? Nothing at all! It is not at all unusual for things to have MTBF's which significantly exceed their lifetime as defined by wearout, ... . A "thirty-something" American has a failure (death) rate of about 1.1 deaths per 1000 person-years and, therefore, has an MTBF of 900 years (of course its really 900 person-years per death). Even the best ones, however, wear out long before that."

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