survival function: Information and Much More from Answers.com

The survival function, also known as a survivor function or reliability function, is a property of any random variable that maps a set of events, usually associated with mortality or failure of some system, onto time. It captures the probability that the system will survive beyond a specified time. The term reliability function is common in engineering while the term survival function is used in a broader range of applications, including human mortality.

Definition

Let X be a continuous random variable with cumulative distribution function F(t) on the interval [0,∞). Its survival-, or reliability-function is:

Properties

Every survival function R(t) is monotone decreasing, i.e. R(u) < R(t) for u > t

The time, t = 0, represents some origin, typically the beginning of a study or the start of operation of some system. R(0) is commonly unity but can be less to represent the probability that the system fails immediately upon operation.

See also

• Survival analysis
• Failure rate
• Cumulative hazard function
• Mean time to failure
• Mean residual life

Statistics
Descriptive statistics	Mean (Arithmetic, Geometric) - Median - Mode - Power - Variance - Standard deviation
Inferential statistics	Hypothesis testing - Significance - Null hypothesis/Alternate hypothesis - Error - Z-test - Student's t-test - Maximum likelihood - Standard score/Z score - P-value - Analysis of variance
Survival analysis	Survival function - Kaplan-Meier - Logrank test - Failure rate - Proportional hazards models
Probability distributions	Normal (bell curve) - Poisson - Bernoulli
Correlation	Confounding variable - Pearson product-moment correlation coefficient - Rank correlation (Spearman's rank correlation coefficient, Kendall tau rank correlation coefficient)
Regression analysis	Linear regression - Nonlinear regression - Logistic regression