[R] how to test poisson distribution

[Thomas Schönhoff]

Hello Gunter,

2005/10/19, Berton Gunter <gunter.berton at gene.com>:
> 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.
> welcome alternatives, perhaps privately to reduce the list noise level.
>
> (And,yes, I'm sure that Thomas knows this perfectly well).

I'm agree with this. But, my understanding of this thread underlying
question was: "Where might I find some advice to deal with
distributions in R".

So I pointed to Vito Riccis paper on distribution fitting, which also
points to issues of testing/fitting distributions in a Newbie
accessible way, taking beginners to basics insights handling issues
like this in GNU R.

Well, that said I think pointing at sources like this might help
drecreasing, at least a bit of noise on this list.
 Lots of work and sweat have gone into creating such docs, so why not
use them? They're aiming at Newbies using R and offer at the same time
slight glances upon the topic itself.
 Well, I am relying on former dicussions on this topic on this list,
keyword "spoon feeding versus self-helping based on docs".
>
> 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.

Yes, again you are correct here, slopyness isn't very helpful here! I
will take this more into account posting here next time!



sincerely

Thomas