Event History Analysis with R

Chapter 2

Single Sample Data

2.1 Introduction

The basic model descriptions of survival data are introduced. Basically, the distribution of survival data may be either continuous or discrete, but the nonparametric estimators of the distributions of survival time are discrete in any case. Therefore, when introducing the estimators, the discrete models are necessary to know.

In the present chapter, only nonparametric estimation is discussed. This means that no assumptions whatsoever are made about the true underlying distribution. Parametric models are presented in Chapter 5.

2.2 Continuous Time Model Descriptions

Traditional statistical model descriptions are based on the density and the cumulative distribution functions. These functions are not ...