The logrank test, or log-rank test, is a hypothesis test to compare the survival distributions of two samples. It is a nonparametric test and appropriate to use when the data are right skewed and censored (technically, the censoring must be non-informative). It is widely used in clinical trials to establish the efficacy of a new treatment in comparison with a control treatment when the measurement is the time to event (such as the time from initial treatment to a heart attack). The test is sometimes called the Mantel–Cox test. The logrank test can also be viewed as a time-stratified Cochran–Mantel–Haenszel test.
The test was first proposed by Nathan Mantel and was named the logrank test by Richard and Julian Peto.[1][2][3]