The Kaplan-Meier estimator, also known as the product-limit estimator, is a statistical measure used to estimate the percentage chance of survival of a population over a given length of time. The formula for the Kaplan-Meier estimator is given as follows:
In plain English, this formula means that the survivability at any time (t) is the product of 1 minus the number of end events (d), the non-surviving population, divided by the number of the population that have not reached an end event (n), the surviving population, for all increments of time (t) that are less than or equal to the current time (t).
Think of this as essentially a running product over time. This means that values for the function are calculated for each increment of time (t) less than or equal to the present time and then multiplied together to get a new value. Obviously, this...