Modul of Basic Statistics

1-Sample Poisson Rate

A. Objective 1. To compare a rate to a target value 2. To estimate a rate of occurrence

B. Brief Explanation The 1-sample Poisson rate procedure calculates a confidence interval and conducts a hypothesis test for the rate of occurrence in a one-sample Poisson model. A Poisson process describes the occurrences of an event in a given amount of time, area, volume, or other observation space. For example, an automobile manufacturer takes a sample of 50 cars and counts the number of scratches on each car hood. The dimension of the observation space is called the length of observation. C. Example of Uses To compare a rate to a target value

A zoning requirement states that, if an intersection exceeds 300 vehicles per hour, it must have a pedestrian crosswalk. Transportation officials want to know if traffic at a busy intersection exceeds 300 vehicles per hour. Because the officials are measuring an event rate, the data follows a Poisson distribution. When you have Poisson data, you can use a 1-sample Poisson rate test to compare an occurrence rate to a benchmark value, such as a competitor's claim or a historical rate. To estimate a rate of occurrence

To determine whether it can meet customer requirements, a computer manufacturer needs to estimate the average number of scratches on monitor screens. Obviously, the manufacturer can't check every monitor, so inspectors count scratches on a sample. You can't really know the true rate without measuring every possible observation. A 1sample Poisson rate test can give you a practical estimate of the rate in the form of a confidence interval, which is a range of values that is likely to contain the rate. D. Application in Minitab 1. Data for 1-Sample Poisson Rate a. What kind of data is required?

Your data must follow a Poisson distribution. In other words, they must represent counts of events, defects, or activities. Also, the data must be nonnegative integers. For example:

The number of flaws on a car's new coat of paint The number of calls to a technical support hotline in one day The number of cars that pass over a bridge in one hour

Consider how much data you need to give the test enough power to detect differences between your population rate and a target value. To help determine the sample size you need, use Stat > Power and Sample Size > 1-Sample Poisson Rate. b. Raw Data To enter raw data, list every observation from one sample in a single column. If you enter multiple columns, Minitab performs multiple 1Sample Poisson Rate procedures.

c. Frequency data To enter frequency data, list each unique count value once in a column, and list the frequencies for each of these counts in another column.

2. Performing 1-Sample Poisson Rate in Minitab Scenario: For the past 30 days, a metropolitan public transportation company counted the number of customer complaints. The company wants to establish the rate of complaints to gauge staffing requirements for their new complaint department. The public transportation company want to assess the occurrence rate of an event from a process that follows the Poisson distribution. 1-Sample Poisson Rate is appropriate. Enter your data to the minitab worksheet. The complaints column consists of the number of customer complaints. There are 30 data for there are 30 days of observation.

 Click Stat > Basic Statistics > 1-Sample Poisson Rate.

After that, the dialog box of 1-Sample Poisson Rate will appear Choose Samples in columns, and enter Complaints.

 Click OK and the results will be shown.

Results for: BREAKDOWNS.MTW
Confidence Interval for One-Sample Poisson Rate: Complaints Variable Complaints Total Occurrences 598 N 30 Rate of Occurrence 19,9333 95% CI (18,3675, 21,5970)

"Length" of observation = 1.

3. Interpreting the Results

Results for: BREAKDOWNS.MTW
Confidence Interval for One-Sample Poisson Rate: Complaints Variable Complaints Total Occurrences 598 N 30 Rate of Occurrence 19,9333 95% CI (18,3675, 21,5970)

"Length" of observation = 1.

Total Occurrences and N Use this information to assess the basic properties of the data: Total occurrences - the number of times an event occurs in the sample. N - the number of times observations were collected. In the public transportation example, the company counted 598 complaints over 30 days. Length of Observation This output displays the user-defined "length" of observation, which represents the dimensions of each observation period. In the public transportation example, each of the 30 observations lasted one day, so "length" equals 1. Alternately, the transportation company could have calculated the same rate by considering N to be 1 (observations counted over 1 month) and the length of observation to be 30 (30 days in a month): (598 / 1) / 30 = 19.9333. Rate of Occurrence The rate of occurrence is the average number of times an event occurs per unit length of observation. It is equal to (Total occurrences / N) / (length of observation).

In the public transportation example, 598 complaints were filed in 30 days, so the average complaint rate equals 19.9333 complaints per day. Confidence Interval The confidence interval is a range of values that is likely to contain the population's occurrence rate. For the public transportation data, the transportation company is 95% confident that the daily complaint rate is between 18.3675 and 21.5970.

4. About confidence intervals and bounds A confidence interval (CI) is an interval used to estimate a population parameter from sample data. Minitab displays both the upper and lower bounds of the interval if the alternative hypothesis (H1) is nondirectional, but only one bound if H1 is directional. Confidence intervals are composed of two basic parts: point estimate - a single value computed from the sample data. This value is considered to be an estimate of the parameter of interest, however it is unlikely that the point estimate is exactly equal to the parameter. Therefore, to account for the possibility of estimation error, the error margin is included in the confidence interval to provide a range of reasonable parameter values. error margin - determines the width of the confidence interval through the use of probability. To construct the confidence interval, you simply add and/or subtract the error margin from the point estimate. For an a of 0.05, a 95% confidence interval is constructed. This means that the method used to construct the interval has a probability of 0.95 (which is 1 - a) of producing an interval containing the parameter of interest. Thus, if one hundred 95% confidence intervals were constructed, you would expect around 95 of the intervals to contain the parameter. In other words, you can be 95% confident that the true value of the parameter is within the interval. If the alternative hypothesis is directional, then the confidence interval extends to infinity in one direction. In this case, only one bound is displayed. For example, if you conduct a onesample t-test with an a of 0.05, and your H1 is m < 5, a 95% upper bound will be displayed. You can be 95% confident that the true value of m is less than or equal to the upper bound.