Estimation of the incubation time distribution in the singly and doubly interval censored model

Abstract

We analyze nonparametric estimators for the distribution function of the incubation time in the singly and doubly interval censoring model. The classical approach is to use parametric families like Weibull, log‐normal or gamma distributions in the estimation procedure. We propose nonparametric estimates for functions of the observations, which stay closer to the data than the classical parametric methods. We also give explicit limit distributions for discrete versions of the models and apply this to compute confidence intervals. The methods complement the analysis of the continuous model in Groeneboom (2021, 2023). R scripts for computation of the estimates are provided in Groeneboom (2020).