Survival Analysis in Medicine and Genetics

"Preface In modern medicine, knowledge on human lifetime and what shortens it has been gradually accumulated over years of tremendous numeric studies. All quantitative products in those studies are well supported by a system of statistical tools, namely survival analysis. This book is speci cally devoted to this important category of statistical methods. There already exist quite a number of well-written, widely used introductory texts on this subject. The rst two chapters of this book may serve a similar function and provide some basic textbook-type materials for a third or fourth year undergraduate module or a graduate module in statistics or biostatistics. Comparing to other texts, we do not repeat basic principles of regression analysis and mainly focus on the special concerns on survival model. We intend to cover almost all fundamental materials while con ning us to simple notations and plain language everywhere in these two chapters. The counting process theory is only appended in the second chapter for the sake of completeness and may entertain students who like theories. According to authors' experience, the materials in these two chapters are usually sufficient for a one-semester module at the level indicated above. Another piece that can be easily incorporated in the syllabus of this module is the rst section of chapter 5 where elementary diagnostic medicine approaches are discussed"--

Jialiang Li is an associate professor in the Department of Statistics and Applied Probability at the National University of Singapore, an associate professor at the Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School, and a scientist at the Singapore Eye Research Institute. He is on the editorial board of Biometrics and has published 70 peer-reviewed research papers in scientific journals. He has been a recipient the Young Scientist Award from the National University of Singapore and the New Investigator Grant and Cooperative Basic Research Grant from the National Medical Research Council.

Shuangge Ma is an associate professor in the Department of Biostatistics, Yale School of Public Health at Yale University. He earned a PhD in statistics from the University of Wisconsin and completed postdoctoral training in the Department of Biostatistics at the University of Washington. His research interests include survival analysis, semiparametric methods, bioinformatics, cancer studies, and health economics.