-- Main.estate - 13 Nov 2012
Consider a point process

, which counts in time the number of failures up to time

. At each failure the item is instantly repaired and as a result, its current failure rate becomes

times smaller. How does this process evolve in time? -- at one hand, the ``baseline" failure rate

will typically increase in time, but on the other hand, multiplication by

each time will pull it down. So, what will be the result?
In other words, if

is the ``small" increment forward, or the number of failures in
![$[t, t+dt]$](/foswiki/pub/Users/Estate/FailureWithRepairs/latex6a92e142bd44882df3ea39e7a63d161c.png)
for small

, and if

is some ``baseline" failure rate, then this

is a Poisson random variable with parameter

, that is, essentially, the probability of a failure occurring in this interval is

, and the process with increment
is a martingale.
The model can be very naturally generalized to make

random and/or make it changing in time.
It seems that the applications of this model will be numerous, and its mathematical analysis not too simple.