Solution

ID: past-exam-of-the-options-i-course-of-the-university-of-oxford/2009/o/o1/solution

By continuity of the cumulative distribution function and nonnegativity, ; strict increase and allow inversion for every . The probability integral transform follows from
Thus is uniformly distributed on .
The order statistics arrange the sample increasingly: . Strict monotonicity means is the th order statistic of independent uniform variables. Its density is
obtained by choosing the observations below and the above it. This is the beta distribution with parameters , so
For the given log-logistic distribution, rearrangement gives
Consequently plot vertically against horizontally. Under a good fit, replacing by its plotting position gives an approximate straight line with
This is a diagnostic probability plot, rather than an assertion that the expectation of the nonlinear transformed order statistic equals that transformed plotting position. Positive observations occur almost surely under the model.

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