Abstract
This work presents the neutrosophic Maxwell distribution (NMD) as a novel probability distribution. The proposed model represents a generalized design of Maxwell distribution that provides more analytical flexibility for data, including all imprecise observations or some degree of vagueness within the dataset. Important reliability characteristics and distributional properties of NMD are developed under the notion of neutrosophy. The neutrosophic forms of some commonly used functions in applied statistics such as mean, variance, moment generating function, and shape coefficients are explored. In view of uncertainties involved in the processing data and indeterminacy in the defined parameters, an estimation framework using the maximum likelihood approach is established. Additionally, the quantile function is developed to validate the distributional properties of NMD. The efficiency of the neutrosophic estimate has been studied through a Monte Carlo simulation. Finally, real data on the incubation period of COVID-19 are considered for numerical illustration, and further extensions of the NMD for future research works are discussed.