The routine may be called by the names g12abf or nagf_surviv_logrank.
3Description
A survivor function, , is the probability of surviving to at least time . Given a series of failure or right-censored times from groups g12abf calculates a rank statistic for testing the null hypothesis
where is the largest observed time, against the alternative hypothesis
at least one of the
differ, for some
.
Let
, for , denote the list of distinct failure times across all groups and a series of weights. Let denote the number of failures at time in group and denote the number of observations in the group that are known to have not failed prior to time , i.e., the size of the risk set for group at time . If a censored observation occurs at time then that observation is treated as if the censoring had occurred slightly after and, therefore, the observation is counted as being part of the risk set at time . Finally let
The (weighted) number of observed failures in the th group, , is, therefore, given by
and the (weighted) number of expected failures in the th group, , by
If denotes the vector of differences
and
where
if and otherwise, then the rank statistic, , is calculated as
where denotes a generalized inverse of the matrix . Under the null hypothesis,
where the degrees of freedom, , is taken as the rank of the matrix .
4References
Gross A J and Clark V A (1975) Survival Distributions: Reliability Applications in the Biomedical Sciences Wiley
Kalbfleisch J D and Prentice R L (1980) The Statistical Analysis of Failure Time Data Wiley
Rostomily R C, Duong D, McCormick K, Bland M and Berger M S (1994) Multimodality management of recurrent adult malignant gliomas: results of a phase II multiagent chemotherapy study and analysis of cytoreductive surgery Neurosurgery35 378
5Arguments
1: – IntegerInput
On entry: , the number of failure and censored times.
Constraint:
.
2: – Real (Kind=nag_wp) arrayInput
On entry: the observed failure and censored times; these need not be ordered.
Constraint:
for at least one , for and .
3: – Integer arrayInput
On entry: contains the censoring code of the th observation, for .
the th observation is a failure time.
the th observation is right-censored.
Constraints:
or , for ;
for at least one .
4: – Integer arrayInput
On entry: contains a flag indicating which group the th observation belongs in, for .
Constraints:
, for ;
each group must have at least one observation.
5: – IntegerInput
On entry: , the number of groups.
Constraint:
.
6: – Character(1)Input
On entry: indicates whether frequencies are provided for each time point.
Frequencies are provided for each failure and censored time.
The failure and censored times are considered as single observations, i.e., a frequency of is assumed.
Constraint:
or .
7: – Integer arrayInput
Note: the dimension of the array ifreq
must be at least
if .
On entry: if , must contain the frequency (number of observations) to which each entry in t corresponds.
If , each entry in t is assumed to correspond to a single observation, i.e., a frequency of is assumed, and ifreq is not referenced.
On exit: , when , i.e., the probability associated with ts.
13: – Real (Kind=nag_wp) arrayOutput
On exit: , the observed number of failures in each group.
14: – Real (Kind=nag_wp) arrayOutput
On exit: , the expected number of failures in each group.
15: – IntegerOutput
On exit: , the number of distinct failure times.
16: – Integer arrayOutput
On exit: the first nd elements of di contain , the number of failures, across all groups, at time .
17: – Integer arrayOutput
On exit: the first nd elements of ni contain , the size of the risk set, across all groups, at time .
18: – IntegerInput
On entry: the size of arrays di and ni. As , if is not known a priori then a value of n can safely be used for ldn.
Constraint:
, the number of unique failure times.
19: – IntegerInput/Output
On entry: ifail must be set to , or to set behaviour on detection of an error; these values have no effect when no error is detected.
A value of causes the printing of an error message and program execution will be halted; otherwise program execution continues. A value of means that an error message is printed while a value of means that it is not.
If halting is not appropriate, the value or is recommended. If message printing is undesirable, then the value is recommended. Otherwise, the value is recommended. When the value or is used it is essential to test the value of ifail on exit.
On exit: unless the routine detects an error or a warning has been flagged (see Section 6).
6Error Indicators and Warnings
If on entry or , explanatory error messages are output on the current error message unit (as defined by x04aaf).
An unexpected error has been triggered by this routine. Please
contact NAG.
See Section 7 in the Introduction to the NAG Library FL Interface for further information.
Your licence key may have expired or may not have been installed correctly.
See Section 8 in the Introduction to the NAG Library FL Interface for further information.
Dynamic memory allocation failed.
See Section 9 in the Introduction to the NAG Library FL Interface for further information.
7Accuracy
Not applicable.
8Parallelism and Performance
Background information to multithreading can be found in the Multithreading documentation.
g12abf is threaded by NAG for parallel execution in multithreaded implementations of the NAG Library.
g12abf makes calls to BLAS and/or LAPACK routines, which may be threaded within the vendor library used by this implementation. Consult the documentation for the vendor library for further information.
Please consult the X06 Chapter Introduction for information on how to control and interrogate the OpenMP environment used within this routine. Please also consult the Users' Note for your implementation for any additional implementation-specific information.
9Further Comments
The use of different weights in the formula given in Section 3 leads to different rank statistics being calculated. The logrank test has , for all , which is the equivalent of calling g12abf when . Other rank statistics include Wilcoxon (), Tarone–Ware () and Peto–Peto ( where ) amongst others.
Calculation of any test, other than the logrank test, will probably require g12abf to be called twice, once to calculate the values of and to facilitate in the computation of the required weights, and once to calculate the test statistic itself.
10Example
This example compares the time to death for adults with two different types of recurrent gliomas (brain tumour), astrocytoma and glioblastoma, using a logrank test. For further details on the data see Rostomily et al. (1994).