Interval censoring:: identifiability and the constant-sum property

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Oller, Ramon; Gomez, Guadalupe; Calle, M. Luz
• 署名单位: Universitat de Vic - Universitat Central de Catalunya (UVic-UCC); Universitat de Vic - Universitat Central de Catalunya (UVic-UCC)
• 刊物名称: BIOMETRIKA
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0006-3444
• DOI: 10.1093/biomet/asm002
• 发表日期: 2007
• 页码: 6170
• 关键词: Consistency; nonidentifiability; ignorability; estimator

摘要

The constant-sum property given in Oller et al. (2004) for censoring models justifies the use of a simplified likelihood to obtain the nonparametric maximum likelihood estimator of the lifetime distribution. In this paper we study the relevance of the constant-sum property in the identifiability of the lifetime distribution. We show that the lifetime distribution is not identifiable outside the class of constant-sum models. We also show that the lifetime probabilities assigned to the observable intervals are identifiable inside the class of constant-sum models. We illustrate all these notions with several examples.