Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2010 iii Paper 37 5 c Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
This is an EM algorithm for a censored lognormal competing-risks mixture. Write and suppose , with mixing weights , . The missing data are and for censored patients; neither is missing for recorded deaths or recoveries. The complete-data log-likelihood, apart from terms independent of the parameters, isThe lognormal Jacobian is also parameter-independent and therefore does not affect the maximization.
At iteration , set for each censored patient and let . Bayes' rule gives the E-step class weightsGiven that class, has a truncated normal distribution above . With the Inverse Mills ratio , compute both moments needed for the E-step:Thus , , and the corresponding second moment is . For an observed outcome at time , use , , and . These specify the full conditional expectation of .
Put and let be the total number of patients. Maximizing that expected complete-data log-likelihood gives the M-stepAll moments on the right are evaluated at the old parameters. Repeat the E-step and M-step until the observed log-likelihood stabilizes, using positive initial variances and mixing weights. The expectation-maximization algorithm increases that likelihood at each exact iteration, but need not find its global maximum; multiple starts help distinguish local optima. The resulting estimates give the case fatality probability andThese are conditional event-time distributions, distinct from the cumulative incidence functions and .