survreg.distributions        package:survival        R Documentation

_P_a_r_a_m_e_t_r_i_c _S_u_r_v_i_v_a_l _D_i_s_t_r_i_b_u_t_i_o_n_s

_D_e_s_c_r_i_p_t_i_o_n:

     List of distributions for accelerated failure models. These are
     location-scale families for some transformation of time. The entry
     describes  the cdf F and density f of a canonical member of the
     family.

_U_s_a_g_e:

     survreg.distributions

_F_o_r_m_a_t:

     There are two basic formats, the first defines a distribution de
     novo, the second defines a new distribution in terms of an old
     one.

       name:                     name of distribution
       variance:                 function(parms) returning the variance (currently unused)
       init(x,weights,...):      Function returning an initial
                                 estimate of the mean and variance
                                 (used for initial values in the iteration)
       density(x,parms):         Function returning a matrix with columns F,
                                 1-F,f,f'/f,f''/f
       quantile(p,parms):        Quantile function
       scale:                    Optional fixed value for the scale parameter
       parms:                    Vector of default values and names for any additional parameters
       deviance(y,scale,parms):  Function returning the deviance for a
                                 saturated model; used only for deviance residuals.

     and to define one distribution in terms of another

       name:    name of distribution
       dist:    name of parent distribution
       trans:   transformation (eg log)
       dtrans:  derivative of transformation
       itrans:  inverse of transformation
       scale:   Optional fixed value for scale parameter

_D_e_t_a_i_l_s:

     There are four basic distributions:'extreme', 'gaussian',
     'logistic' and 't'. The last three are parametrised in the same
     way as the distributions already present in R. The extreme value
     cdf is

                            F=1-e^{-e^t}.


     When the logarithm of survival time has one of the first three
     distributions we obtain respectively 'weibull', 'lognormal', and
     'loglogistic'. The location-scale parameterizaion of a Weibull
     distribution found in 'survreg' is not the same as the
     parameterization of 'rweibull'.

     The other predefined distributions are defined in terms of these.
     The 'exponential' and 'rayleigh' distributions are Weibull
     distributions with fixed 'scale' of 1 and 0.5 respectively, and
     'loggaussian' is a synonym for 'lognormal'.

     For speed parts of the three most commonly used distributions are
     hardcoded in C; for this reason the elements of
     'survreg.distributions' with names of "Extreme value", "Logisitic"
     and "Gaussian" should not be modified.  (The order of these in the
     list is not important, recognition is by name.) As an alternative
     to modifying 'survreg.distributions' a new distribution can be
     specified as a separate list. This is the preferred method of
     addition and is illustrated below.

_S_e_e _A_l_s_o:

     'survreg', 'pweibull', 'pnorm','plogis', 'pt', 'survregDtest'

_E_x_a_m_p_l_e_s:

     # time transformation
     survreg(Surv(time, status) ~ ph.ecog + sex, dist='weibull', data=lung)
     # change the transformation to work in years
     # intercept changes by log(365), everything else stays the same
     my.weibull <- survreg.distributions$weibull
     my.weibull$trans <- function(y) log(y/365)
     my.weibull$itrans <- function(y) 365*exp(y)
     survreg(Surv(time, status) ~ ph.ecog + sex, lung, dist=my.weibull)

     # Weibull parametrisation
     y<-rweibull(1000, shape=2, scale=5)
     survreg(Surv(y)~1, dist="weibull")
     # survreg parameters are scale=1/shape, intercept=log(scale)

     # Cauchy fit
     mycauchy <- list(name='Cauchy',
                      init= function(x, weights, ...) 
                           c(median(x), mad(x)),
                      density= function(x, parms) {
                           temp <- 1/(1 + x^2)
                           cbind(.5 + atan(temp)/pi, .5+ atan(-temp)/pi,
                                 temp/pi, -2 *x*temp, 2*temp^2*(4*x^2*temp -1))
                           },
                      quantile= function(p, parms) tan((p-.5)*pi),
                      deviance= function(...) stop('deviance residuals not defined')
                      )
     survreg(Surv(log(time), status) ~ ph.ecog + sex, lung, dist=mycauchy)