Pareto distribution is an important distribution in extreme value theory. In this paper, we consider parallel systems with Pareto components and study the effect of heterogeneity on skewness of such systems. It is shown that, when the lifetimes of components have different shape parameters, the parallel system with heterogeneous Pareto component lifetimes is more skewed than the system with independent and identically distributed Pareto components. However, for the case when the lifetimes of components have different scale parameters, the result gets reversed in the sense of star ordering. We also establish the relation between star ordering and dispersive ordering by extending the result of Deshpande and Kochar [(1983). Dispersive ordering is the same as tail ordering. Advances in Applied Probability 15(3): 686–687] from support $(0, \infty )$ to general supports $(a, \infty )$, $a > 0$. As a consequence, we obtain some new results on dispersion of order statistics from heterogeneous Pareto samples with respect to dispersive ordering.

In the literature of stochastic orders, one rarely finds results characterizing non-comparability of random variables. We prove simple tools implying the non-comparability with respect to the convex transform order. The criteria are used, among other applications, to provide a negative answer for a conjecture about comparability in a much broader scope than its initial statement.

This paper studies the variability of both series and parallel systems comprised of heterogeneous (and dependent) components. Sufficient conditions are established for the star and dispersive orderings between the lifetimes of parallel [series] systems consisting of dependent components having multiple-outlier proportional hazard rates and Archimedean [Archimedean survival] copulas. We also prove that, without any restriction on the scale parameters, the lifetime of a parallel or series system with independent heterogeneous scaled components is larger than that with independent homogeneous scaled components in the sense of the convex transform order. These results generalize some corresponding ones in the literature to the case of dependent scenarios or general settings of components lifetime distributions.

In this paper we prove that a parallel system consisting of Weibull components with different scale parameters ages faster than a parallel system comprising Weibull components with equal scale parameters in the convex transform order when the lifetimes of components of both systems have different shape parameters satisfying some restriction. Moreover, while comparing these two systems, we show that the dispersive and the usual stochastic orders, and the right-spread order and the increasing convex order are equivalent. Further, some of the known results in the literature concerning comparisons of k-out-of-n systems in the exponential model are extended to the Weibull model. We also provide solutions to two open problems mentioned by Balakrishnan and Zhao (2013) and Zhao et al. (2016).

A parallel system with heterogeneous exponential component lifetimes is shown to be more skewed (according to the convex transform order) than the system with independent and identically distributed exponential components. As a consequence, equivalent conditions for comparing the variabilities of the largest order statistics from heterogeneous and homogeneous exponential samples in the sense of the dispersive order and the right-spread order are established. A sufficient condition is also given for the proportional hazard rate model.