Yale University
Department of Statistics

Seminar list for 1996-97

A Model for Cancer Trends by Histologic Type Incorporating Uncertain Diagnoses


Monday, September 9, 1996

Keqin Qi
Ph.D. Candidate
Department of Biostatistics
Yale University
Seminar to be held in Room 309, LEPH, 60 College Street


When the time trends of male lung cancer in Connecticut are studied by histologic type, a serious problem arises in how to deal with the category of Not Otherwise Specified (NOS) type because this can account for a high percentage of the data. In this talk, the NOS cases are assumed as a mixture of known histologic types. We investigate the time trends of three temporal effects, i.e. age, period and cohort by employing a technique for handling missing data. This model depends on a pre-specified set of allocation probability distributions. Identifiability of the time trends are discussed in general. The results are shown at last by using the EM algorithm and the Markov Chain Monte Carlo (MCMC) sampling techniques.