Parametric And Semiparametric Models With Applications To Reliability Survival Analysis And Quality Of Life

Parametric and semiparametric models are tools with a wide range of applications to reliability, survival analysis, and quality of life. This self-contained volume examines these tools in survey articles written by experts currently working on the development and evaluation of models and methods. While a number of chapters deal with general theory, several explore more specific connections and recent results in "real-world" reliability theory, survival analysis, and related fields. Specific topics covered include: * cancer prognosis using survival forests * short-term health problems related to air pollution: analysis using semiparametric generalized additive models * semiparametric models in the studies of aging and longevity This book will be of use as a reference text for general statisticians, theoreticians, graduate students, reliability engineers, health researchers, and biostatisticians working in applied probability and statistics.

Reliability and survival analysis are important applications of stochastic mathematics (probability, statistics and stochastic processes) that are usually covered separately in spite of the similarity of the involved mathematical theory. This title aims to redress this situation: it includes 21 chapters divided into four parts: Survival analysis, Reliability, Quality of life, and Related topics. Many of these chapters were presented at the European Seminar on Mathematical Methods for Survival Analysis, Reliability and Quality of Life in 2006.

This book deals with the mathematical aspects of survival analysis and reliability as well as other topics, reflecting recent developments in the following areas: applications in epidemiology; probabilistic and statistical models and methods in reliability; models and methods in survival analysis, longevity, aging, and degradation; accelerated life models; quality of life; new statistical challenges in genomics. The work will be useful to a broad interdisciplinary readership of researchers and practitioners in applied probability and statistics, industrial statistics, biomedicine, biostatistics, and engineering.

Statistical models and methods for lifetime and other time-to-event data are widely used in many fields, including medicine, the environmental sciences, actuarial science, engineering, economics, management, and the social sciences. For example, closely related statistical methods have been applied to the study of the incubation period of diseases such as AIDS, the remission time of cancers, life tables, the time-to-failure of engineering systems, employment duration, and the length of marriages. This volume contains a selection of papers based on the 1994 International Research Conference on Lifetime Data Models in Reliability and Survival Analysis, held at Harvard University. The conference brought together a varied group of researchers and practitioners to advance and promote statistical science in the many fields that deal with lifetime and other time-to-event-data. The volume illustrates the depth and diversity of the field. A few of the authors have published their conference presentations in the new journal Lifetime Data Analysis (Kluwer Academic Publishers).

This volume is a collection of invited chapters covering recent advances in accelerated life testing and degradation models. The book covers a wide range of applications to areas such as reliability, quality control, the health sciences, economics and finance. It is an excellent reference for researchers and practitioners in applied probability and statistics, industrial statistics, the health sciences, quality control, economics, and finance.

Statistical methods have become an increasingly important and integral part of research in the health sciences. Many sophisticated methodologies have been developed for specific applications and problems. This self-contained comprehensive volume covers a wide range of topics pertaining to new statistical methods in the health sciences, including epidemiology, pharmacovigilance, quality of life, survival analysis, and genomics. The book will serve the health science community as well as practitioners, researchers, and graduate students in applied probability, statistics, and biostatistics.

This book will be of interest to readers active in the fields of survival analysis, genetics, ecology, biology, demography, reliability and quality control. Since Sir David Cox’s pioneering work in 1972, the proportional hazards model has become the most important model in survival analysis. The success of the Cox model stimulated further studies in semiparametric and nonparametric theories, counting process models, study designs in epidemiology, and the development of many other regression models that could offer more flexible or more suitable approaches in data analysis. Flexible semiparametric regression models are increasingly being used to relate lifetime distributions to time-dependent explanatory variables. Throughout the book, various recent statistical models are developed in close connection with specific data from experimental studies in clinical trials or from observational studies.