Goodness-of-Fit Tests for the Gompertz Distribution

Adam Lenart, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
Trifon I. Missov, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research

While the Gompertz distribution is often fitted to lifespan data, testing whether the fit satisfies theoretical criteria is being neglected. Here six goodness-of-fit measures - the Anderson-Darling statistic, the Kullback-Leibler discrimination information, the correlation coefficient test, a statistic using moments, testing for the mean of the sample hazard, and a nested test against the generalized extreme value distributions, are discussed. Along with an application to laboratory rat data, critical values calculated by the empirical distribution of the test statistics are also presented.