Survival Data Mining
Survival analysis (SA) consists of a variety of methods for analyzing the timing of events and/or the times of transition among several states or conditions. The event of interest can only happen at most once to any individual or subject. Alternate terms to identify this process include Failure Analysis (FA), Reliability Analysis (RA), Lifetime Data Analysis (LDA), Time to Event Analysis (TEA), Event History Analysis (EHA), and Time Failure Analysis (TFA) depending on the type of application the method is used for (Elashoff, 1997). Survival Data Mining (SDM) is a new term being coined recently (SAS, 2004). There are many models and variations on the different models for SA or failure analysis. This chapter discusses some of the more common methods of SA with real life applications. The calculations for the various models of SA are very complex. Currently, there are multiple software packages to assist in performing the necessary analyses much more quickly.