Exponential survival risk over an interval
ID: exponential-survival-risk-over-an-interval
Let the survival time have an exponential distribution with rate per year. Its hazard function is per year, its cumulative hazard is for in years, and its survival function is . For a subject still event-free after five years, the conditional probability of an occurrence within the next two years isThe original population's probability of an occurrence between those same endpoints is instead . Dividing by recovers the conditional answer. The memoryless property makes the two-year conditional answer independent of the preceding five years.
For just year, the exact conditional event probability is , close to the instantaneous approximation . For two years that approximation gives , whereas the exact answer is about . At the single exact time five, the event probability is zero. These are three different quantities: an instantaneous hazard function with inverse-time units, a short-interval approximation, and an exact finite-interval probability.
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