In a two-stage normal trial, conditioning on a first-stage sample mean exceeding raises that mean. With stage standard error , mean parameter , and combined mean , the estimator bias after continuation is , where is the upper-tail Inverse Mills ratio. It is positive and tends to zero as continuation becomes virtually certain.
Let eventual outcome have probability , with . An observed outcome at time contributes to the likelihood, while right censoring at contributes . The expectation-maximization algorithm imputes both the censored outcome and its latent log event time. Its E-step uses the displayed conditional weights and the first two moments of a truncated normal distribution above . With and Inverse Mills ratio , these moments are and . Observed outcomes use deterministic class weights and moments . The M-step updates each class probability to its average weight, its mean to the weighted first moment, and its variance to the weighted second moment minus the squared new mean. Outcome-specific cumulative probabilities are cumulative incidence functions, not the conditional distributions themselves.
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, is
The 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 weights
Given 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-step
All 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 and
These are conditional event-time distributions, distinct from the cumulative incidence functions and .
For and , substitution gives
since . Divide by to obtain the upper-truncated normal mean.
For , set , and . Then . Symmetry of the normal density and distribution yields
The ratio is an Inverse Mills ratio. It is positive, and the pooled estimator's conditional bias is therefore
This identity supplies both correction procedures below.
Let and denote the first- and second-stage sample means, let , and write . Continuation is the selection event . The second-stage sample mean stays independent of , so . The first-stage sample mean has a truncated normal distribution. With and the upper-tail Inverse Mills ratio ,
The positive conditional selection bias after futility continuation comes from selecting unusually large first-stage outcomes. The unconditional sample mean of a fixed observations would be unbiased; that is a different sampling distribution from the one restricted to continued trials.
As , , and , so the estimator bias tends to zero. It decreases with : differentiating gives , because for a standard normal random variable. Thus
For a fixed observed colour , Bayes' theorem gives
Completing the square shows that this is a truncated normal distribution with variance , lower endpoint zero, and untruncated location
Hence
Conditioning first on and using the law of total expectation yields the dusty colour-magnitude relation
As , the Inverse Mills ratio implies with vanishing derivative, so the asymptotic slope is . As , , so the asymptotic slope is .