poisson.test: Exact Poisson tests

Description

Performs an exact test of a simple null hypothesis about the rate parameter in Poisson distribution, or for the ratio between two rate parameters.

Usage

poisson.test(x, T = 1, r = 1,
    alternative = c("two.sided", "less", "greater"),
    conf.level = 0.95)

Arguments

number of events. A vector of length one or two.

time base for event count. A vector of length one or two.

hypothesized rate or rate ratio

alternative

indicates the alternative hypothesis and must be one of "two.sided", "greater" or "less". You can specify just the initial letter.

conf.level

confidence level for the returned confidence interval.

Value

A list with class "htest" containing the following components:
statisticthe number of events (in the first sample if there are two.)
parameterthe corresponding expected count
p.valuethe p-value of the test.
conf.inta confidence interval for the rate or rate ratio.
estimatethe estimated rate or rate ratio.
null.valuethe rate or rate ratio under the null, r.
alternativea character string describing the alternative hypothesis.
methodthe character string "Exact Poisson test" or "Comparison of Poisson rates" as appropriate.
data.namea character string giving the names of the data.

Details

Confidence intervals are computed similarly to those of binom.test in the one-sample case, and using binom.test in the two sample case.

Examples

Run this code

### These are paraphrased from data sets in the ISwR package

## SMR, Welsh Nickel workers
poisson.test(137, 24.19893)

## eba1977, compare Fredericia to other three cities for ages 55-59
poisson.test(c(11, 6+8+7), c(800, 1083+1050+878))