Rank tests for survival analysis: a comparison by analogy with games

Several commonly used two-sample linear rank tests for censored data have been shown to be closely linked in mathematical structure. This pedagogical paper elucidates the relationships among the tests by introducing a videogame played between a boys' team and a girls' team with different rules of payment by the consecutive losers considered. Depending on the rule of payment, the total amount of money the girls win as a team becomes the Wilcoxon statistic, the Savage statistic, or their generalizations under censoring.