Book Reviews

Books reviewed:
M Hollander and D Wolfe, Nonparametric Statistical Methods
T Leonard and J.S.J Hsu, Bayesian Methods     

A Non-parametric Frailty Model for Temporally Clustered Multivariate Failure Times

Abstract A model is introduced here for multivariate failure time data arising from heterogenous populations. In particular, we consider a situation in which the failure times of individual subjects are often temporally clustered, so that many failures occur during a relatively short age interval. The clustering is modelled by assuming that the subjects can be divided into ‘internally homogenous’ latent classes, each such class being then described by a time‐dependent frailty profile function. As an example, we reanalysed the dental caries data presented earlier in Härkänen et al. [Scand. J. Statist. 27 (2000) 577], as it turned out that our earlier model could not adequately describe the observed clustering.     

On the preservation of copula structure under truncation

The author characterizes the copula associated with the bivariate survival model of Clayton (1978) as the only absolutely continuous copula that is preserved under bivariate truncation.     

习近平外交话语英译的叙事建构 ——以《论坚持推动建构人类命运共同体》为例

作为习近平外交专著,《论坚持推动建构人类命运共同体》集中体现了新时代中国特色社会主义外交思想,全面体现了习近平外交叙事风格。以莫娜·贝克的叙事学概念为基础对习近平外交话语及英译进行分析,既能凸显译者作为翻译主体的作用和功效,又有助于中国外交叙事的建构。通过叙事策略的运作,包括建构时空、选择性采用文本素材、建构标示以及再定位人物事件,译文重构了习近平外交话语的本体叙事、公共叙事、概念叙事以及元叙事。同时,叙事学与外交翻译的结合不仅拓宽叙事学学科领域,为外交话语研究提供新视角,而且为完成既定的翻译使命提供了新的路径参考。保持政治上的高度、揣摩文化上的深度、把握思维上的向度以及巧用技能上的广度都成为译者顺利完成叙事建构的重要因素。     

A Multivariate Model for Repeated Failure Time Measurements

A parametric multivariate failure time distribution is derived from a frailty-type model with a particular frailty distribution. It covers as special cases certain distributions which have been used for multivariate survival data in recent years. Some properties of the distribution are derived: its marginal and conditional distributions lie within the parametric family, and association between the component variates can be positive or, to a limited extent, negative. The simple closed form of the survivor function is useful for right-censored data, as occur commonly in survival analysis, and for calculating uniform residuals. Also featured is the distribution of ratios of paired failure times. The model is applied to data from the literature     

A Class of Efficient Non-parametric K-sample Tests for Multivariate Counting Processes with Frailties

A K -sample testing problem is studied for multivariate counting processes with time-dependent frailty. Asymptotic distributions and efficiency of a class of non-parametric test statistics are established for certain local alternatives. The concept of efficiency is to show that for every non-parametric test in this class, there is a parametric submodel for which the optimal test has the same asymptotic power as the non-parametric one. The theory is applied to analyse a diabetic retinopathy study data set. A simulation study is also presented to illustrate the theory     

On a system of nonhomogeneous components sharing a common frailty

The components of a reliability system subjected to a common random environment usually have dependent lifetimes. This paper studies the stochastic properties of such a system with lifetimes of the components following multivariate frailty models and multivariate mixed proportional reversed hazard rate (PRHR) models, respectively. Through doing stochastic comparison, we devote to throwing a new light on how the random environment affects the number of working components of a reliability system and on assessing the performance of a k-out-of-n system.     

Conditional and marginal estimates in case-control family data – extensions and sensitivity analyses

This work considers two specific estimation techniques for the family-specific proportional hazards model and for the population-averaged proportional hazards model. So far, these two estimation procedures were presented and studied under the gamma frailty distribution mainly because of its simple interpretation and mathematical tractability. Modifications of both procedures for other frailty distributions, such as the inverse Gaussian, positive stable and a specific case of discrete distribution, are presented. By extensive simulations, it is shown that under the family-specific proportional hazards model, the gamma frailty model appears to be robust to frailty distribution mis-specification in both bias and efficiency loss in the marginal parameters. The population-averaged proportional hazards model, is found to be robust under the gamma frailty model mis-specification only under moderate or weak dependency within cluster members.     

澜湄命运共同体建设的意义、动因和路径选择

构建澜湄国家命运共同体是中国周边外交和亚洲命运共同体构想的具体实践，将助力东盟共同体建设，促进次区域稳定和繁荣。本文通过对澜湄命运共同体建设的意义、动因和影响因素分析，提出了澜湄命运共同体建设的路径选择。     

Shared frailty model based on reversed hazard rate for left censored data

Frailty models are used in the survival analysis to account for the unobserved heterogeneity in the individual risks to disease and death. To analyze the bivariate data on related survival times (e.g., matched pairs experiments, twin or family data), the shared frailty models were suggested. In this article, we introduce the shared gamma frailty models with the reversed hazard rate. We develop the Bayesian estimation procedure using the Markov chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) technique to estimate the parameters involved in the model. We present a simulation study to compare the true values of the parameters with the estimated values. We apply the model to a real life bivariate survival dataset.