Integration – Integrating the Weibull Probability Density Function

expected valueintegrationprobability distributions

I am trying to calculate the following integral.

$$\int_0^{\infty} x^{k-1} e^{-Ax^k} dx$$

This is very similar to the Weibull pdf integrated from $0$ to infinity (which would clearly be $1$).

What I've actually done is taken the expected value of a function of $x$ where $x$ follows a Weibull distribution. The integral above shows what is left after I pull out all the constants and combine some constants into a single parameter, $A$.

$$f(x) = \frac{\lambda_1}{2}e^{-(x/\lambda_1)^k}$$
where $X$ ~ $\operatorname{Weibull}(k,\lambda_2)$.

Best Answer

Call $u= Ax^{k}$, I will assume that $k>0$, so when $x=0$ then $u=0$,

$$ {\rm d}u = k A x^{k-1}~{\rm d}x \tag{1} $$

and your integral becomes

$$ \int_0^{+\infty} {\rm d}x~ x^{k-1} e^{-Ax^k} = \frac{1}{kA}\int_0^{+\infty} \underbrace{{\rm d }x~ x^{k-1} k A}_{{\rm d}u} e^{-\underbrace{(Ax^k)}_{u}} = \frac{1}{kA} \int_0^{+\infty} {\rm d}u~ e^{-u} = \cdots $$