Why use Kaplan-Meier

Why don't we just compute the simple cumulative distribution function (CDF) and use \(1 - \text{CDF}\) as the estimate for the survivor curve?

50 XP

In general, we could do that, but when there is censoring we need special strategies.
press1
The distribution function cannot be used to obtain the survivor function.
press2
It is impossible to compute the CDF for right-censored data.
press3