PONE-D-20-00826

A new generator for proposing flexible lifetime distributions and its properties

PLOS ONE

Dear Dr. Aslam,

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Feng Chen

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

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Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Partly

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2. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

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Reviewer #1: Yes

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: This paper proposes a new generator for flexible lifetime distributions and discusses its statistical properties. Its performance is demonstrated by a Monte Carlo simulation study and three real-life applications. The paper is generally well structured and easy to access. A limitation is that the comparison between the proposed model and other alternatives only focuses on the goodness-of-fit and the results of AIC suggest that the difference seems to be insignificant. From the perspective of practical application, the model complexity should also be considered. The authors are suggested to conduct the model comparison using Bayesian methods. The deviance information criterion available in Bayesian inference, which is deemed as a generalization of the AIC, provides a combined measure of model fit and complexity. Please refer to some representative works which also model the censored continuous variables as in this paper, including:

A Bayesian spatial random parameters Tobit model for analyzing crash rates on roadway segments. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 2017, 100: 37-43.

A multivariate random parameters Tobit model for analyzing highway crash rate by injury severity. Accident Analysis and Prevention, 2017, 99: 184-191.

Incorporating temporal correlation into a multivariate random parameters Tobit model for modeling crash rate by injury severity. Transportmetrica A: Transport Science, 2018, 14 (3): 177-191.

Jointly modeling area-level crash rates by severity: A Bayesian multivariate random-parameters spatio-temporal Tobit regression. Transportmetrica A: Transport Science, 2019, 15(2): 1867-1884.

Reviewer #2: The topic of this paper is interesting and the methods sound. There are several suggestions to improve this paper.

1. “we will take the Fréchet as example” could be “we will take the Fréchet distribution as example”. And some references are needed.

2. “Typically this requires numerical optimization techniques such as Newton-Raphson.” References are needed for these techniques.

3. This paper lacks of references in the last decade.

4. “The score equations, and associated maximum likelihood estimates, are obtained along the same lines as in the previous sections, hence we leave this to the reader.” This sentence is not suitable. Some reference could be added instead of letting reader guess. For example, the following ones.

[1] Investigation on the Injury Severity of Drivers in Rear-End Collisions Between Cars Using a Random Parameters Bivariate Ordered Probit Model, International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 2019, 16(14) , 2632.

[2] Injury severities of truck drivers in single- and multi-vehicle accidents on rural highway, Accident Analysis and Prevention, 2011, 43(5), 1677-1688.

[3] Analysis of hourly crash likelihood using unbalanced panel data mixed logit model and real-time driving environmental big data. 2018, JOURNAL OF SAFETY RESEARCH. 65: 153-159.

[4] Investigating the Differences of Single- and Multi-vehicle Accident Probability Using Mixed Logit Model, Journal of Advanced Transportation, 2018, UNSP 2702360.

5. For AIC, these references could also be referred to.

6. There are some ◇ in this paper, which might be not correct. For example, Page 10.

7. For censored data, Tobit models are frequently used, which could be referred to the following papers.

[5] Modeling crash rates for a mountainous highway using refined-scale panel data”, Transportation Research Record, 2015, 2515:10-16.

[6] Refined-scale panel data crash rate analysis using random-effects tobit model, Accident Analysis and Prevention, 2014, 73, 323-332.

8. “a p-value of 0.02663451” could be “a p-value of 0.027”.

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Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No

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A new generator for proposing flexible lifetime distributions and its properties

PONE-D-20-00826R1

Dear Dr. Aslam,

We are pleased to inform you that your manuscript has been judged scientifically suitable for publication and will be formally accepted for publication once it complies with all outstanding technical requirements.

Within one week, you will receive an e-mail containing information on the amendments required prior to publication. When all required modifications have been addressed, you will receive a formal acceptance letter and your manuscript will proceed to our production department and be scheduled for publication.

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With kind regards,

Feng Chen

Academic Editor

PLOS ONE

Additional Editor Comments (optional):

Reviewers' comments:

Reviewer's Responses to Questions

Comments to the Author

1. If the authors have adequately addressed your comments raised in a previous round of review and you feel that this manuscript is now acceptable for publication, you may indicate that here to bypass the “Comments to the Author” section, enter your conflict of interest statement in the “Confidential to Editor” section, and submit your "Accept" recommendation.

Reviewer #1: All comments have been addressed

Reviewer #2: All comments have been addressed

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2. Is the manuscript technically sound, and do the data support the conclusions?

The manuscript must describe a technically sound piece of scientific research with data that supports the conclusions. Experiments must have been conducted rigorously, with appropriate controls, replication, and sample sizes. The conclusions must be drawn appropriately based on the data presented.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: Yes

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3. Has the statistical analysis been performed appropriately and rigorously?

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: Yes

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4. Have the authors made all data underlying the findings in their manuscript fully available?

The PLOS Data policy requires authors to make all data underlying the findings described in their manuscript fully available without restriction, with rare exception (please refer to the Data Availability Statement in the manuscript PDF file). The data should be provided as part of the manuscript or its supporting information, or deposited to a public repository. For example, in addition to summary statistics, the data points behind means, medians and variance measures should be available. If there are restrictions on publicly sharing data—e.g. participant privacy or use of data from a third party—those must be specified.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: Yes

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5. Is the manuscript presented in an intelligible fashion and written in standard English?

PLOS ONE does not copyedit accepted manuscripts, so the language in submitted articles must be clear, correct, and unambiguous. Any typographical or grammatical errors should be corrected at revision, so please note any specific errors here.

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: Yes

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6. Review Comments to the Author

Please use the space provided to explain your answers to the questions above. You may also include additional comments for the author, including concerns about dual publication, research ethics, or publication ethics. (Please upload your review as an attachment if it exceeds 20,000 characters)

Reviewer #1: (No Response)

Reviewer #2: (No Response)

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7. PLOS authors have the option to publish the peer review history of their article (what does this mean?). If published, this will include your full peer review and any attached files.

If you choose “no”, your identity will remain anonymous but your review may still be made public.

Do you want your identity to be public for this peer review? For information about this choice, including consent withdrawal, please see our Privacy Policy.

Reviewer #1: No

Reviewer #2: No