Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Comparing Distribution Functions Via Empirical Likelihood, Yichuan Zhao, Ian W. Mckeague

Mathematics and Statistics Faculty Publications

This paper develops empirical likelihood based simultaneous confidence bands for differences and ratios of two distribution functions from independent samples of right-censored survival data. The proposed confidence bands provide a flexible way of comparing treatments in biomedical settings, and bring empirical likelihood methods to bear on important target functions for which only Wald-type confidence bands have been available in the literature. The approach is illustrated with a real data example.