- "Survival analysis is a branch of statistics for analyzing the expected duration of time until one event occurs."
Models for analyzing time-to-event data.
- "This topic is called reliability theory or reliability analysis in engineering, duration analysis or duration modelling in economics, and event history analysis in sociology."
- "Survival analysis attempts to answer certain questions, such as what is the proportion of a population which will survive past a certain time? Of those that survive, at what rate will they die or fail? Can multiple causes of death or failure be taken into account? How do particular circumstances or characteristics increase or decrease the probability of survival?"
- "To answer such questions, it is necessary to define 'lifetime'."
- "In the case of biological survival, death is unambiguous, but for mechanical reliability, failure may not be well-defined."
- "Even in biological problems, some events (for example, heart attack or other organ failure) may have the same ambiguity."
- "Traditionally only a single event occurs for each subject, after which the organism or mechanism is dead or broken."
- "The study of recurring events is relevant in systems reliability, and in many areas of social sciences and medical research."