Generalized Kaplan Meier Estimator for Fuzzy Survival Times

Survival analysis can be defined as a set of methods where the response of interest is the time until a specified event occurred. The most common specified event is death and the related time is called survival time or life time in medical sciences. The Kaplan Meier estimator is one of the popular methods for precise survival times. It is natural that life time is of a continuous nature, therefore it is unrealistic to treat life time observations as precise numbers. In [Viertl 2009] it is shown that life time observations are not precise numbers, but more or less fuzzy. In this study a Generalized Kaplan Meier estimator for fuzzy survival time observations is proposed.