Statistical modeling and forecasting of time-to-events data are crucial in every applied sector. For the modeling and forecasting of such data sets, several statistical methods have been introduced and implemented. This paper has two aims, i.e., (i) statistical modeling and (ii) forecasting. For modeling time-to-events data, we introduce a new statistical model by combining the flexible Weibull model with the Z-family approach. The new model is called the Z flexible Weibull extension (Z-FWE) model, where the characterizations of the Z-FWE model are obtained. The maximum likelihood estimators of the Z-FWE distribution are obtained. The evaluation of the estimators of the Z-FWE model is assessed in a simulation study. The Z-FWE distribution is applied to analyze the mortality rate of COVID-19 patients. Finally, for forecasting the COVID-19 data set, we use machine learning (ML) techniques i.e., artificial neural network (ANN) and group method of data handling (GMDH) with the autoregressive integrated moving average model (ARIMA). Based on our findings, it is observed that ML techniques are more robust in terms of forecasting than the ARIMA model.
Keywords: ARIMA; COVID-19 data; flexible Weibull extension model; forecasting; machine learning techniques; statistical modeling.