Abstract
The Kaplan-Meier estimator for the survival function in the censored data problem can be expressed for finite samples as an explicit function of two empirical subsurvival functions. This function is the natural one that expresses the survival function in terms of the sub-survival functions. As an illustration of the usefulness of expressing the Kaplan-Meier estimator in this way, the strong consistency of the Kaplan-Meier estimator is easily proved.