What you have is a slightly more subtle variant of the following: library(survival) data(lung) mydata <- cbind(lung, newvar =2) coxph(Surv(time, status) ~ ph.karno + newvar, mydata)
coef exp(coef) se(coef) z p ph.karno -0.0164 0.984 0.00585 -2.81 0.005 newvar NA NA 0.00000 NA NA You have created a data set where at all times <13 the variable t=0, and at all times >13 the variable t=1. The Cox model compares the values of the covariates of each subject who died to the values of those who did not die, using the current covariate values AT THAT TIME. Since the value of your "t" is always a constant within the set, the variable contains no information for discriminating the events from the non-events. Zero information --> a coefficient of NA. Terry Therneau Mayo Clinic ______________________________________________ R-help@r-project.org mailing list https://stat.ethz.ch/mailman/listinfo/r-help PLEASE do read the posting guide http://www.R-project.org/posting-guide.html and provide commented, minimal, self-contained, reproducible code.