Date: 2026-02-24

# User Guide to Package SurvivalClusteringTree

#### 2026-02-24

## packages

This vignette needs the following packages to run

    library(SurvivalClusteringTree)
    library(survival)
    library(tidyverse)
    library(WeightedCluster)

## Simulation of data

We simulate a data set with 3 groups of 80 observations each. All of the group follow a Weibull distribution but with different shape and scale parameters. We simulate as well 3 continuous variables \(x_1\), \(x_2\) and \(x_3\) and 2 binaries variables \(z_1\) and \(z_2\).

    set.seed(0)
    simulated_data<-
      data.frame(label=rep(c("A","B","C"),c(80,80,80)))%>%
      mutate(
        time=case_when(
          label=="A"~rweibull(n(),shape=2,scale=2),
          label=="B"~rweibull(n(),shape=2,scale=5),
          label=="C"~rweibull(n(),shape=2,scale=3)),
        survtime=pmin(time,10),
        survevent=time<10)%>%
      select(-time)%>%
      mutate(
        x1=case_when(
          label=="A"~rnorm(n(),0),
          label=="B"~rnorm(n(),3),
          label=="C"~rnorm(n(),3)),
        x2=case_when(
          label=="A"~rnorm(n(),3),
          label=="B"~rnorm(n(),0),
          label=="C"~rnorm(n(),3)),
        x3=case_when(
          label=="A"~rnorm(n(),0),
          label=="B"~rnorm(n(),0),
          label=="C"~rnorm(n(),2)),
        z1=case_when(
          label=="A"~sample(c("F1","F2"),n(),replace=T,prob=c(0.8,0.2)),
          label=="B"~sample(c("F1","F2"),n(),replace=T,prob=c(0.5,0.5)),
          label=="C"~sample(c("F1","F2"),n(),replace=T,prob=c(0.2,0.8))),
        z2=case_when(
          label=="A"~sample(c("G1","G2"),n(),replace=T,prob=c(0.7,0.3)),
          label=="B"~sample(c("G1","G2"),n(),replace=T,prob=c(0.1,0.9)),
          label=="C"~sample(c("G2","G2"),n(),replace=T,prob=c(0.4,0.6))))

First, we fit a set of trees with the `survival_forest` function.

    a_survival_forest<-
      survival_forest(
        survival_outcome=Surv(survtime,survevent)~1,
        numeric_predictor=~x1+x2+x3,
        factor_predictor=~z1+z2,
        data=simulated_data,
        nboot=100,
        min_weights=20)

We then compute the distance between the observation using the `predict_distance_forest` function.

    a_distance<-predict_distance_forest(
      a_survival_forest,
      numeric_predictor=~x1+x2+x3,
      factor_predictor=~z1+z2,
      data=simulated_data)

Once the distances have been computed, it is possible to explore how the observatins are related to each other. In this example it appears that there are 3 large clusters which different strongly from each others.

    a_dist<-as.dist(a_distance$mean_distance)
    a_cmdscale_fit<-cmdscale(a_dist)

    a_hclust<-hclust(a_dist,method="average")
    a_dendrogram<-as.dendrogram(a_hclust)
    plot(a_dendrogram)

Dendrogram

It is possible to identify the optimum number of clusters by identifying the cut off with the largest ASWw.

    a_clustrange<-as.clustrange(a_hclust,diss=a_dist,ncluster=10)
    df_ASWw<-data.frame(nclus=2:10,ASWw=a_clustrange$stats[,"ASWw"])
    ggplot(df_ASWw,aes(x=nclus,y=ASWw))+geom_line()+geom_vline(xintercept=3,lty=2)+theme_bw()

Dendrogram

Finaly, it is possible to identify how the observations are similar and how does the clustering model performs.

    result_data<-data.frame(
      x=a_cmdscale_fit[,1],
      y=a_cmdscale_fit[,2],
      truth=simulated_data$label,
      cluster=factor(cutree(a_hclust,3)))

    gridExtra::grid.arrange(
      ggplot(result_data,aes(x=x,y=y,color=truth))+geom_point()+theme_bw(),
      ggplot(result_data,aes(x=x,y=y,color=cluster))+geom_point()+theme_bw(),ncol=2)

Dendrogram