A Study on Estimating Mean Lifetime After Modifying Censored Observations

Kim and Kim (1997) developed a method of estimating the mean lifetime based on the augmented data after imputing censored observations. Assuming the linear relationship between lifetime and covariates, and then introducing the procedure of Buckley and James (1979) to estimate the mean lifetimes of censored observations, they proposed a mean lifetime estimator and its consistency under the regularity conditions. In this article, the Kim and Kim's estimator is compared with the estimator introduced by Gill (1983) through simulations under the various configurations. Also, their estimator is illustrated with two real data sets.