Product Description

Survival data consist of a single event for each population unit, namely, end of life, which is modeled with a life distribution. In contrast, many applications involve repeated-events data, where a unit may accumulate any number of events over time. Examples include the number and cost of repairs of products, the number and treatment costs of recurrent disease episodes in patients, and the number of childbirths to statisticians. This applied book provides practitioners with basic nonparametric methods for such data, particularly the plot of the estimate of the population mean cumulative function (MCF), which yields most of the information sought.

Recurrent Events Data Analysis for Product Repairs, Disease Recurrences, and Other Applications is the first book to present a simple, unified theory that includes data on costs or other "values" of discrete events, not just the number of events. It surveys computer programs that calculate and plot the MCF estimate with confidence limits, shows their output, and explains how to interpret such plots. Many such calculations can be easily done with a pocket calculator or spreadsheet program. Also, the book introduces basic Poisson and Cox regression models and parametric models, including homogeneous and nonhomogeneous Poisson processes and renewal processes.

Audience
This book is a needed addition to the literature, since suitable nonparametric models and data analyses for recurrent events appear in few books and much of the literature is too abstract for most practitioners who need such methodology. The intended audience for this book includes engineers, medical researchers, social scientists, statisticians, and other practitioners who encounter repeated events data. The only background needed is a basic statistics course. Previous knowledge of stochastic processes is not needed, as the simple presentation is self-contained.

Contents
Preface; Acknowledgements; Chapter 1: Recurrent Events Data and Applications; Chapter 2: Population Model, MCF, and Basic Concepts; Chapter 3: MCF Estimates for Exact Age Data; Chapter 4: MCF Confidence Limits for Exact Age Data; Chapter 5: MCF Estimate and Limits for Interval Age Data; Chapter 6: Analysis of a Mix of Events; Chapter 7: Comparison of Samples; Chapter 8: Survey of Related Topics; References; Index.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #2288536 in Books
• Published on: 2003-01-03
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Paperback
• 151 pages

Review
The book is clearly written, to the point, and is easy to read. -- Necip Doganaksoy, Journal of Quality Technology, January 2003

Review
'The book is clearly written, to the point, and is easy to read. It is well suited for self-study by practitioners with introductory level background in statistics. It can also be used as a supplementary text in a graduate or upper level undergraduate course on reliability. I highly recommend this book to anyone interested in analysis of recurrence data.' Necip Doganaksoy, Journal of Quality Technology

About the Author
Wayne B. Nelson is a leading expert on reliability data analysis and statistical methods for accelerated testing. He privately consults throughout industry on diverse engineering and scientific applications of statistics. He develops and presents statistical courses for companies, universities, and professional societies. Dr. Nelson also works as an expert witness. He is the author of two other books and more than 120 publications on statistical methods and is a Fellow of the American Statistical Association, the American Society for Quality, and the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.

Customer Reviews

the first book published on recurrent events
Wayne Nelson is a prolific author and an excellent teacher. He has written many well known texts on reliability, accelerated testing and data plotting. In the late 1990s he saw a need to analyze time to event data in a different way since some outcomes are recurrent. This book is a landmark text as it was the first to do serious theory and application if statistical methods to recurrent events. Nelson sees the mean cumulative function as a key description of these point processes and emphasizes it and good graphical techniques in the book. It includes many examples such as the births of children by a particular woman. The data in the text on births was generated at a statistics workshop I invited him to give in Los Angeles.

Wayne also published one of the earliest research articles on recurrent events. At that time Lawless and Nadeau published another article on this topic using a different approach. Lawless has very recently published his own text on recurrent events based on his approach.

I recommend these books (Nelson's and Lawless') as they are both rigorous and well written and cover an important topic that has not received much attention.