#datawithSeinfeld 3 of 10: The Contest

"The Contest" is a Seinfeld episode that centers around a wager between Jerry, George, Kramer, and Elaine.

They bet on who can refrain from....temptation....the longest. Throughout the episode they face hilarious temptations, and one by one they're eliminated from the contest.

This represents a use case for Survival Analysis, a statistical method most often associated with medical scenarios like time-to-death. Survival Analysis can be applied in any situation where its necessary to estimate the time until a particular event occurs, and can help identify factors that influence those timings.

A Survival Function represents the probability that an entity will "survive" past a certain time. In "The Contest", temptations such as the exhibitionist neighbor or the bicycling JFK Jr become factors into that function and impact each character's "survival".

But Survival Analysis isn't just for medicine. Consider:

1. Predicting customer churn time

2. Estimating machine breakdown

3. Forecasting employee tenure

Next time you have a 'time-to-event' scenario, consider modeling with survival analysis and become master of your domain!