Quickstart.rst

Quickstart

Installation

Install via pip:

pip install lifelines

Kaplan-Meier and Nelson-Aalen

Let's start by importing some data. We need the durations that individuals are observed for, and whether they "died" or not.

from lifelines.datasets import load_waltons
df = load_waltons() # returns a pandas DataFrame

T = df['T']
E = df['E']

T is an array of durations, E is a either boolean or binary array representing whether the "death" was observed (alternatively an individual can be censored).

Note

By default, lifelines assumes all "deaths" are observed.

from lifelines import KaplanMeierFitter
kmf = KaplanMeierFitter()
kmf.fit(T, event_observed=E) # more succiently, kmf.fit(T,E)

After calling the fit method, we have access to new properties like survival_function_ and methods like plot(). The latter is a wrapper around Pandas internal plotting library (see here for examples).

kmf.plot()

Multiple groups

groups = df['group']
ix = (groups == 'control')

kmf.fit(T[ix], E[ix], label='control')
ax = kmf.plot()

kmf.fit(T[~ix], E[~ix], label='miR-137')
kmf.plot(ax=ax)

Similar functionality exists for the NelsonAalenFitter:

from lifelines import NelsonAalenFitter
naf = NelsonAalenFitter()
naf.fit(T, event_observed=E)

but instead of a survival_function_ being exposed, a cumulative_hazard_ is.

Note

Similar to Scikit-Learn, all statistically estimated quanities append an underscore to the property name.

Survival Regression

While the above KaplanMeierFitter and NelsonAalenFitter are useful, they only give us an "average" view of the population. Often we have specific data at the individual level, either continuous or categorical, that we would like to use. For this, we turn to survival regression, specifically AalenAdditiveFitter or CoxPHFitter.

from lifelines.datasets import load_regression_dataset
regression_dataset = load_regression_dataset()

regression_dataset.head()

The input of the fit method's API on AalenAdditiveFitter is different than above. All the data, including durations, censorships and covariates must be contained in a Pandas DataFrame (yes, it must be a DataFrame). The duration column and event occured column must be specified in the call to fit.

from lifelines import AalenAdditiveFitter, CoxPHFitter

# Using Cox Proportional Hazards model
cf = CoxPHFitter()
cf.fit(regression_dataset, duration_col='T', event_col='E')
print cf.summary

# Using Aalen's Additive model
aaf = AalenAdditiveFitter(fit_intercept=False)
aaf.fit(regression_dataset, duration_col='T', event_col='E')

After fitting, you'll have access to properties like cumulative_hazards_ and methods like plot, predict_cumulative_hazards, and predict_survival_function. The latter two methods require an additional argument of individual covariates:

x = regression_dataset[regression_dataset.columns - ['E','T']]
aaf.predict_survival_function(x.ix[10:12]).plot() #get the unique survival functions of the first two subjects

Like the above estimators, there is also a built-in plotting method:

aaf.plot()