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[S] Re: frailty models and AIC

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Subject: [S] Re: frailty models and AIC
From: "Therneau, Terry M., Ph.D." <therneau@mayo.edu> (Terry Therneau)
Date: Tue, 28 Dec 1999 13:44:35 -0600
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  When you fit a penalized Cox model, either frailty or psplines, the
returned object contains a "df" component.  For instance, using the
kidney transplant data of McGilchrist
 
     McGilchrist and Aisbett, Biometrics 47, 461-66, 1991
 
kidney <- read.table('data.kidney', col.names=c("id", "time", "status",
                                      "age", "sex", "disease", "frail"))
>  coxph(Surv(time, status) ~ age + sex, kidney)
Call:
coxph(formula = Surv(time, status) ~ age + sex, data = kidney)
 
 
        coef exp(coef) se(coef)     z      p 
age  0.00203     1.002  0.00925  0.22 0.8300
sex -0.82933     0.436  0.29895 -2.77 0.0055
 
Likelihood ratio test=7.12  on 2 df, p=0.0285  n= 76 

> kfit4 <- coxph(Surv(time, status) ~  age + sex + frailty(id), 
        data=kidney)
> kfit4
                coef se(coef)    se2 Chisq   DF       p 
        age  0.00522 0.0119   0.0088  0.19  1.0 0.66000
        sex -1.58335 0.4594   0.3515 11.88  1.0 0.00057
frailty(id)                          22.97 12.9 0.04100
 
Iterations: 7 outer, 49 Newton-Raphson
     Variance of random effect= 0.408   M-likelihood = -181.6 
Degrees of freedom for terms=  0.6  0.6 12.9 
Likelihood ratio test=46.6  on 14.06 df, p=2.36e-05  n= 76 


The AIC for the two models is based on 2 and 14 degrees of freedom,
respectively (note the last lines).  The total df for a non-penalized
model is sum(!is.na(fit$coef)), the check for NA is important only when
one fits an overparameterized model.  For a penalized model the
df is sum(fit$df).

        Terry Therneau



 Terry M. Therneau, Ph.D.                        (507) 284-3694 
 Head, Section of Biostatistics                  (507) 284-9542  FAX
 Mayo Clinic                                     therneau.terry@mayo.edu
 Rochester, Minn 55905
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