Survival function

The survival function is a function that gives the probability that a patient, device, or other object of interest will survive past a certain time.[1] The survival function is also known as the survivor function[2] or reliability function.[3] The term reliability function is common in engineering while the term survival function is used in a broader range of applications, including human mortality. The survival function is the complementary cumulative distribution function of the lifetime. Sometimes complementary cumulative distribution functions are called survival functions in general.

  1. ^ Kleinbaum, David G.; Klein, Mitchel (2012), Survival analysis: A Self-learning text (Third ed.), Springer, ISBN 978-1441966452
  2. ^ Tableman, Mara; Kim, Jong Sung (2003), Survival Analysis Using S (First ed.), Chapman and Hall/CRC, ISBN 978-1584884088
  3. ^ Ebeling, Charles (2010), An Introduction to Reliability and Maintainability Engineering (Second ed.), Waveland Press, ISBN 978-1577666257