Discussion: View Thread

  • 1.  Easy to understand Survival Analysis article for clients

    Posted 10-24-2013 16:10
    Hi Everyone,

    I have a consulting client that wants to better understand Survival / Time to Event analysis and has requested an easy to understand article.   What do you recommend?

    Thanks!

    -Greg

    -------------------------------------------
    Gregory Warnes
    Owner and Chief Scientist
    Gregory R. Warnes Consulting
    greg@warnes.net
    tel: 585-678-6661
    -------------------------------------------


  • 2.  RE:Easy to understand Survival Analysis article for clients

    Posted 10-24-2013 22:10
    We have one chapter in our textbook that introduces Survival Analysis, http://www.pearsonhighered.com/kuiper1einfo/contents.html. The material is basic enough for undergrads with only one statistcs class to understand. It covers, the Kaplan-Meier estimator, confidence intervals, log-rank test, Wilcoxon tests, censoring and hazard functions. 

    -------------------------------------------
    Shonda Kuiper
    Grinnell College
    -------------------------------------------








  • 3.  RE:Easy to understand Survival Analysis article for clients

    Posted 10-25-2013 02:26
    Chapter 2 in the book Applied Reliability, 3rd ed., by Tobias and Trindade, published in 2012 by CRC Press, is entitled "Reliability Concepts" and presents introductory material on reliability and survival analysis that is easy to understand. The book is available at amazon.com. 

    -------------------------------------------
    David Trindade
    Fellow
    Bloom Energy
    -------------------------------------------








  • 4.  RE:Easy to understand Survival Analysis article for clients

    Posted 10-25-2013 08:42
    Depending on the disciplines the clients come from you may want to mention two things.

    This may be a different use of the term reliability than you are used to.  This is not about the consistency of measurements or constructing scales.  It is more about things like how long things take or how long things last. For example, in this study ____________.

    Some disciplines use the term "event history analysis"  for these techniques.

    -------------------------------------------
    Arthur Kendall
    Social Research Consultants
    -------------------------------------------








  • 5.  RE:Easy to understand Survival Analysis article for clients

    Posted 10-28-2013 13:38
    I was on my way out of town when this email arrived. "New York, New York, a helluva of a town!" I'm back and want to mention a few very simple webpages that I have written. They focus more on Kaplan-Meier curves than Cox regression, but they do help with understanding what censoring is and why we have to account for it properly.

    The first is a fun little article about a fruit fly experiment where a screen is left off the cage and some of the flies bug out.
    --> http://www.pmean.com/08/SimpleKm.html

    A slightly more complicated example shows how the Kaplan-Meier curve is the product of a series of conditional probabilities.
    --> http://www.pmean.com/00/kaplan.html

    I talk about the conceptual interpretation of the Kaplan-Meier curve in the November 2009 issue of my newsletter.
    --> http://www.pmean.com/news/2009-11.html#7

    I also have a page that shows an example of how to conduct a survival analysis in SPSS. It's a bit sparse, but I hope to expand the description for a book I am writing.
    --> http://www.pmean.com/02/survival.html

    These webpages may be a bit too elementary, and they barely touch on Cox regression, but I hope they are still helpful.
    -------------------------------------------
    Stephen Simon
    Independent Statistical Consultant
    P. Mean Consulting
    -------------------------------------------