rankhazard (version 0.8-1)
Description
Rank-hazard plots (Karvanen and Harrell, Statistics in
Medicine 2009) visualize the relative importance of covariates
in a proportional hazards model. The key idea is to rank the
covariate values and plot the relative hazard as a function of
ranks scaled to interval [0,1]. The relative hazard is plotted
with respect to the reference hazard, which can be e.g. the
hazard related to the median of the covariate. Transformation
to scaled ranks allows plotting of covariates measured in
different units in the same graph, which helps in the
interpretation of the epidemiological relevance of the
covariates. Rank-hazard plots show the difference of hazards
between the extremes of the covariate values present in the
data and can be used as a tool to check if the proportional
hazards assumption leads to reasonable estimates for
individuals with extreme covariate values. Alternative
covariate definitions or different transformations applied to
covariates can be also compared using rank-hazard plots.