Information Matrix

When asked what was most likely to blow a government off-course, Harold Macmillan allegedly replied "Events, dear boy, events!".  Macmillan may not have actually uttered these words (Knowles, 2006, pages 33-34), but there's no denying that unexpected events can derail your plans.  I was recently faced with some unexpected events, albeit in a rather different context.

In his recent blog Stephen described some empirical evidence in support of his practice of discarding the most recent six months' data, to reduce the effect of delays in reporting deaths. This blog demonstrates that the practice can also be justified theoretically in the survival modelling framework, although the choice of six months as the cut-off remains an empirical matter.