Statistical testing is a testing process whose objective is to determine the reliability of software products rather than discovering errors. Test cases are designed for statistical testing with an entirely different objective than those of conventional testing.
Steps in statistical testing Statistical testing allows one to concentrate on testing those parts of the system that are most likely to be used. The first step of statistical testing is to determine the operation profile of the software. The next step is to generate a set of test data corresponding to the determined operation profile. The third step is to apply the test cases to the software and record the time between each failure. After a statistically significant number of failures have been observed, the reliability can be computed.
Advantages and disadvantages of statistical testing
Statistical testing allows one to concentrate on testing parts of the system that are most likely to be used. Therefore, it results in a system that the users to be more reliable (than actually it is!). Reliability estimation using statistical testing is more accurate compared to those of other methods such as ROCOF, POFOD etc. But it is not easy to perform statistical testing properly. There is no simple and repeatable way of defining operation profiles. Also it is very much cumbersome to generate test cases for statistical testing because the number of test cases with which the system is to be tested should be statistically significant