Nonparametric Estimation of Basic Quantities for Right-Censored and Left-Truncated Data

In this chapter we shall examine techniques for drawing an inference about the distribution of the time to some event X, based on a sample of right-censored survival data. A typical data point consists of a time on study and an indicator of whether this time is an event time or a censoring time for each of the nindividuals in the study. We assume throughout this chapter that the potential censoring time is unrelated to the potential event time. The methods are appropriate for Type I, Type II, progressive or random censoring discussed in section 3.2.