Resumen de On the special nature of survival data

Jacobo de Uña Álvarez , Adrián Lago Balseiro

• The estimation of a survival function is most of the times a non-trivial issue due to the special nature of the sampling information. Survival data typically suffer from random censoring and/or truncation, as recognized in most textbooks on the topic. In this work we revisit these issues and discuss the difficulties that appear when handling censored and truncated survival data. Special attention is paid to situations in which the nonparametric maximum-likelihood estimator of the survival function may degenerate, be non-unique or even non-existing. Illustrative examples, simulation studies and real data applications are included. R code is provided.