## Cox Models
The Cox proportional hazards model is commonly used for the study of the relationship beteween predictor variables and survival time. In the usual survival analysis framework, we have data of the form $(y_1, x_1, \delta_1), \ldots, (y_n, x_n, \delta_n)$ where $y_i$, the observed time, is a time of failure if $\delta_i$ is 1 or right-censoring if $\delta_i$ is 0. We also let $t_1 < t_2 < \ldots < t_m$ be the increasing list of unique failure times, and $j(i)$ denote the index of the observation failing at time $t_i$.
The Cox model assumes a semi-parametric form for the hazard
$$
h_i(t) = h_0(t) e^{x_i^T \beta},
$$
where $h_i(t)$ is the hazard for patient $i$ at time $t$, $h_0(t)$ is a shared baseline hazard, and $\beta$ is a fixed, length $p$ vector. In the classic setting $n \geq p$, inference is made via the partial likelihood
$$
L(\beta) = \prod_{i=1}^m \frac{e^{x_{j(i)}^T \beta}}{\sum_{j \in R_i} e^{x_j^T \beta}},
$$
where $R_i$ is the set of indices $j$ with $y_j \geq t_i$ (those at risk at time $t_i$).
|