The Metrics Manifesto

CHAPTER 2Time to Event Metrics

Ticking away the moments that make up a dull day

You fritter and waste the hours in an offhand way

— Pink Floyd, Time

Plague Doctor

This chapter introduces basic time-to-event metrics. We start with historical background and motivation for improvement. We will borrow heavily from a class of threat hunters called epidemiologists. We also introduce a 400-year-old risk management tool called the life table – a tool still in use by actuaries and epidemiologists. Next, we present the tiniest amount of code (five lines or less), and we will explain what each line does. Useful visualizations are also presented.

Chapter Contents:

• Threat Hunting with Dr. Snow: Historical motivation for our methods
• A Haberdasher's Life Tables: A 400-year-old reusable data structure for time to live metrics – created by the first data scientist
• Measuring Time to Events in R!: A detailed explanation of a tiny amount of code for the novice analyst
• Life Table Metrics: Basic metrics that are very useful
• Visualizing Survival: Standard visualization

Threat Hunting with Dr. Snow

Dr. John Snow is the father of modern epidemiology. He led a data science battle on cholera, a deadly threat ravaging 1850s London. His data-driven methods traced the source of the disease so it could be mitigated. Despite having scientifically sound data (even by today's standards), he ...