A numerical simulation was designed and performed to produce uniaxial tensile strength and three-point bending strength data. It was assumed that the specimen could be divided into many small units of volume for which the tensile strength followed a three-parameter Weibull distribution, characterized by the parameters m, sigma(0) and sigma(u). Statistical analysis of the strength data showed that the variation of the bending strength could be characterized by the explicit form of the three-parameter Weibull function as deduced from only the tensile test data. A strong correlation was found to exist between the Weibull modulus, m(E,B), estimated for the bending strength and that for tensile strength, m(E,T). The difference between m(E,B) and m(E,T) is dependent on m but independent of the ratio of sigma(0) to sigma(u). (C) 2003 Kluwer Academic Publishers.