Characterizations of probability distributions is a topic of great popularity in applied probability and reliability literature for over last 30 years. Beside the intrinsic mathematical interest (often related to functional equations) the results in this area are helpful for probabilistic and...

Let be a random vector, and denote by X1:n,X2:n,...,Xn:n the corresponding order statistics. When X1,X2,...,Xn represent the lifetimes of n components in a system, the order statistic Xn-k+1:n represents the lifetime of a k-out-of-n system (i.e., a system which works when at least k...

In this paper, we introduce the concepts of average and projected systems associated to a coherent (parent) system. We analyze several aspects of these notions and show that they can be useful tools in studying the performance of coherent systems with non-exchangeable components. We show that...