Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2012 / iii / Paper 41 / 4 / Solution

At each event time within a stratum, let $r_A,r_B$ be the group risk sets and let $d$ be the total number of observed failures. Under the null of equal hazard functions, the expected A count is $d{r}_A/(r_A+r_B)$. The log-rank statistic adds observed minus expected A counts over event times; the stratified log-rank statistic first makes these comparisons within each patient stratum, then adds across patients. Let $V$ be the sum of the corresponding null conditional variances. The standardized statistic $U/\sqrt{V}$ has an approximate standard normal distribution under the null, and its square has an approximate one-degree-of-freedom chi-squared distribution. Compare it with the appropriate quantile for a two-sided test, under the usual independent censoring and exchangeability assumptions.