Nonparametric estimation for the difference or ratio of median failure times.

A simple and purely nonparametric confidence interval procedure for the difference or ratio of two median failure times is proposed with censored observations. The new proposal does not involve unstable and complicated nonparametric density estimates and is valid asymptotically even when the two underlying distribution functions differ in shape. Extensive numerical studies are carried out to examine the appropriateness of the new procedure for practical sample sizes.

[1]  Nancy Reid,et al.  Estimating the median survival time , 1981 .

[2]  Thomas P. Hettmansperger,et al.  Two-Sample Inference for Median Survival Times Based on One-Sample Procedures for Censored Survival Data , 1990 .

[3]  L. J. Wei,et al.  Nonparametric Estimation for a Scale-Change with Censored Observations , 1983 .

[4]  Bradley Efron,et al.  Censored Data and the Bootstrap , 1981 .

[5]  R. Gill.  Censoring and stochastic integrals , 1980 .

[6]  D P Byar,et al.  A comparison of reflected versus test-based confidence intervals for the median survival time, based on censored data. , 1984, Biometrics.

[7]  Hira L. Koul,et al.  Large-sample statistics based on quadratic dispersion , 1988 .

[8]  John D. Emerson,et al.  Nonparametwic Confidence Intervals for the Median in the Presence of Right CensoriIlg , 1982 .

[9]  D. Cox,et al.  Analysis of Survival Data. , 1985 .

[10]  R. Simon,et al.  Nonparametric confidence limits for survival probabilities and median survival time. , 1982, Cancer treatment reports.

[11]  Ron Brookmeyer,et al.  A Confidence Interval for the Median Survival Time , 1982 .

[12]  J. Laurie,et al.  Biochemical modulation of fluorouracil: evidence of significant improvement of survival and quality of life in patients with advanced colorectal carcinoma. , 1989, Journal of clinical oncology : official journal of the American Society of Clinical Oncology.

[13]  Ørnulf Borgan,et al.  A note on confidence intervals and bands for the survival function based on transformations , 1990 .