Abstract

Given independentrandom variables X-1,..., X-n, with continuous distributions F-1,..., F-n, we investigate the order in which these random variables should be arranged so as to minimize the number of upper records. We show that records are stochastically minimized if the sequence F-1,..., F-n decreases with respect to a partial order, closely related to the monotone likelihood ratio property. Also, the expected number of records is shown to be minimal when the distributions are comparable in terms of a one-sided hazard rate ordering. Applications to parametric models are considered.