In this paper, a computational system is developed that estimates a survival curve and a point estimate when very few data are available and a high proportion of the data are censored. Standard statistical methods require a more complete data set. With any less data expert knowledge or heuristic methods are required. The system uses numerical methods to define fuzzy membership functions about each data point that quantify uncertainty due to censoring. The "fuzzy" data is then used to estimate a survival curve and the mean survival time is calculated from the curve. The new estimator converges to the Product-Limit estimator when a complete data set is available. In addition, this method allows for the incorporation of expert knowledge. Finally, simulation results are provided to demonstrate the performance of the new method and its improvement over the Product-Limit estimator.
The rate of strong uniform consistency for the multivariate product-limit estimator
