The characterization of distributions by order statistics and record values — a unified approach

It is shown that, in some particular cases, it is equivalent to characterize a continuous distribution by properties of records and by properties of order statistics. As an application, we give a simple proof that if two successive jth record values and associated to an i.i.d. sequence are such that and are independent, then the sequence has to derive from an exponential distribution (in the continuous case). The equivalence breaks up for discrete distributions, for which we give a proof that the only distributions such that Xk, n and Xk+1, n – Xk, n are independent for some k ≧ 2 (where Xk, n is the kth order statistic of X1, ···, Xn) are degenerate.