Mean Survival Time Under Weibull Model Using `survreg`

Question

Under the Weibull parametric model, we assume the survival time $T \sim \text{Weibull}(\alpha, \lambda)$, with density $f_T(t) = \alpha \lambda (\lambda t)^{\alpha - 1} \exp(-(\lambda t)^\alpha)$. Then the mean would be $ET = \Gamma(1+1/\alpha)/\lambda$ (from wiki, although they use $1/\lambda$ for the scale and $k$ for the shape). I'm trying to fit a Weibull model to a dataset, but I find there's a discrepancy between the estimated mean survival time from the model, and the mean I calculate using the fitted parameters:

> library(survival)
> data(kidney)
> m <- survreg(Surv(time,status)~1,data=kidney[kidney$sex==1,],dist="weibull")
> predict(m)[1]
[1] 50.37909 # estimate from the model
> summary(m)
> alpha <- 1/m$scale
> lambda <- 1/exp(m$coef)
> gamma(1+1/alpha)/lambda
[1] 62.0962  # my calculation using the formula for expected value

What's the reason for this difference?

Answer 1

The second part of your calculations is correct. You can verify this with a simple simulation:

> set.seed(1234)
> mean(rweibull(1e5, shape = alpha, scale = 1/lambda))
[1] 62.00408

predict.survreg does not return the expected survival time. For details see for example this answer.