URV's Author/s: Fiig Jarner, Søren Perch Nielsen, Jens Spreeuw, Jaap

Keywords: mortality data, frailty models, visual inspection

Abstract: We consider mixed hazard models and introduce a new visual inspection technique capable of detecting the credibility of our model assumptions. Our technique is based on a transformed data approach, where the density of the transformed data should be close to the uniform distribution when our model assumptions are correct. To estimate the density on the transformed axis we take advantage of a recently defined local linear density estimator based on filtered data. We apply the method to national mortality data and show that it is capable of detecting signs of heterogeneity even in small data sets with substantial variability in observed death rates.

Journal publication year: 2013

Publication Type: info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersion info:eu-repo/semantics/article