Title: Random Processes in Reliability Analysis Author: Kamil Chovanec Department: Department of Probability and Mathematical Statistics Supervisor: Doc. Petr Volf, CSc. Supervisor's e-mail address: volf@utia.cas.cz Abstract: The thesis is aimed at the reliability analysis with special em- phasis at the Aalen additive model. The result of hypothesis testing in the reliability analysis is often a process that converges to a Gaussian martingale under the null hypothesis. We can estimate the variance of the martingale using a uniformly consistent estimator. The result of this estimation is a new hypothesis about the process resulting from the original hypothesis. There are several ways to test for this hypothesis. The thesis presents some of these tests and compares their power for various models and sample sizes using Monte Carlo simulations. In a special case we derive a point that maximizes the asymptotic power of two of the tests. Keywords: Martingale, Aalen's additive model, hazard function 1

The proportional hazards model developed by Cox (1972) is by far the most widely used method for regression analysis of censored survival data. Application of the Cox model to more general event history data has become possible through extensions using counting process theory (e.g., Andersen and Borgan (1985), Therneau and Grambsch (2000)). With its development based entirely on counting processes, Aalen’s additive risk model offers a flexible, nonparametric alternative. Ordinary least squares, weighted least squares and ridge regression have been proposed in the literature as estimation schemes for Aalen’s model (Aalen (1989), Huffer and McKeague (1991), Aalen et al. (2004)). This thesis develops data-driven parameter selection criteria for the weighted least squares and ridge estimators. Using simulated survival data, these new methods are evaluated against existing approaches. A survey of the literature on the additive risk model and a demonstration of its application to real data sets are also provided. / Thesis (Master, Mathematics & Statistics) -- Queen's University, 2007-07-18 22:13:13.243