Long-Term Quantitative Assessment of Women Survivability from Cancer: A Unique Descriptive Analysis

Abstract

Statistical Process Control (SPC) methodologies are a set of statistical methods and techniques that were initially designed for industrial processes but could be adopted for non-industrial applications. The current prospective study aimed to provide a unique quantitative investigation of an epidemiological disease using the SPC program platform. The selected case herein was a long-term monitoring record of the yearly cancer mortality rates in women worldwide. Multidimensional segregation of the dataset into subgroups was conducted to visualize the clustering pattern based on nations (42 countries as boxplot), time and the Gaussian Mixture Model (two-interfering bell-shaped distributions approach). The trend of death rates versus the elapsed years would demonstrate a moderately negative correlation with the time following the theory of splines. Construction of control chart based on the fitted Weibull distribution showed a gradual steady improvement in survivability rates from malignancy. The greatest variations in the mortality ratios existed within the European countries.

Keywords

• box plot, cancer, control chart, gaussian mixture model, histogram, mortality rate, weibull