The Kaplan-Meier Estimator as a Sum over Units
Methodology
2025-11-10 v1
Abstract
A sum-wise formulation is proposed for the Kaplan-Meier product limit estimator of partially right-censored survival data. The derived representation permits to write the population's estimator as a sum over its individual units' semi-empirical estimators. This intuitive decomposition is applied to visualize the different contributions of failed and censored units to the overall population estimator.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2511.04721,
title = {The Kaplan-Meier Estimator as a Sum over Units},
author = {Malte C. Tichy},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2511.04721},
year = {2025}
}
Comments
10 pages, 5 figures