The Weibull Distribution has the disadvantage that it is completely unrelated to any form of underlying causality. It is simply a way to fit a math model to data gathered, and makes no attempt to understand the relationship of the gathered data to anything else but time. You can think of it as simply an elegant curve fit. I have no idea why it seems to work as well as it does.
Having said all that, my experience with Weibull has been excellent. It seems to be rather uncanny in its ability to forecast the future based on the past. I have no explanation. There are both three parameter Weibull implementations and two parameter implementations. The latter being the most popular, and the one used here. The parameters being "shape" and "scale" extracted using linear regression techniques applied to the existing data samples.
In this model the sampled data consists of the three confirmed pieces of MH370 debris and the seven almost certain pieces of MH370 debris. The best fit Weibull plot for this data is shown below.
The red dots are the ten debris finds over the 19 months since the flaperon was found at the end of July in 2015. Weibull suggests that the 10 pieces of debris found represent about 15% of all the debris of that type that is going to be found (debris total will be between 60 and 70 pieces). Weibull predicts that 80% of the debris (50 pieces or so) will be found in 100 months (8 years or so) after the flaperon find. It is interesting that the Weibull distribution "adjusted itself" to the earlier Poisson distribution (elsewhere in this blog). Poisson predicts that there is a 30% chance of finding one piece of qualified debris in any given month, and a 10% chance of two finds. Well, in 100 months you would expect 10 months to produce 20 pieces and the remaining 90 months to produce 27 pieces for a total of 47 pieces in 100 months.
Of course, the distribution has no way of knowing if the search for debris will be escalated or reduced. The distribution has no way of knowing if the debris itself is perishable (sinking or otherwise becoming unavailable). It simply says that the most likely result based on the history of previous finds is the result indicated above. Likewise with the rate predictions of Poisson.
Over the next few years Weibull suggests the debris finds will continue to occur at approximately the same rate as the debris found so far. Of course, with Blaine Gibson out of the loop it may be that the debris finds will taper off significantly.
