[R] how to test poisson distribution

Berton Gunter gunter.berton at gene.com
Wed Oct 19 19:18:02 CEST 2005


To be pedantic (I'm feeling cranky today):

One can never test "whether the data follow ["data" is plural] a Poisson
distribution" -- only whether there is sufficient evidence to cast that
assumption into doubt. Perhaps a better shorthand is "whether the data are
consistent with Poisonness" . This correctly leaves open the possibility
that the data are consistent with lots of other distribution-nesses, too. I
welcome alternatives, perhaps privately to reduce the list noise level.

(And,yes, I'm sure that Thomas knows this perfectly well).

I do think that we should be a bit less sloppy about such things even here,
lest we continue to promulgate already widespread misunderstandings, even at
the cost of slightly increased bandwidth. After all, precision is supposed
to be a major concern or ours.

As I've been cranky, others are free to return the favor. Sauce for the
goose ...

-- Bert Gunter
Genentech Non-Clinical Statistics
South San Francisco, CA
 
"The business of the statistician is to catalyze the scientific learning
process."  - George E. P. Box
 
 

> -----Original Message-----
> From: r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch 
> [mailto:r-help-bounces at stat.math.ethz.ch] On Behalf Of Thomas 
> Schönhoff
> Sent: Wednesday, October 19, 2005 10:00 AM
> To: r-help at stat.math.ethz.ch
> Subject: Re: [R] how to test poisson distribution
> 
> Hi,
> 
> 
> 2005/10/19, Wensui Liu <liuwensui at gmail.com>:
> > Dear All,
> >
> > I am wonderng how to test whether the data follows poisson 
> distribution.
> >
> > Thank you so much!
> 
> Did you notice the PDF on distribution tests using R by Vito Ricci,
> its found at CRAN in the docs contrib section, called "FITTING
> DISTRIBUTIONS WITH R"
> 
> Maybe this could be of some help for you, especially look at page 7
> (poisson dsitribution example).
> 
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