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Treat the cell counts as independent Poisson random variables. Under independence of Month and Hospital, the independence log-linear model for a two-way contingency table iswith no Month–Hospital interaction. Compare its Poisson deviance with the appropriate upper quantile of a chi-squared distribution. This is the likelihood-ratio test of independence in a contingency table.

The approximation assumes independent counts with correctly specified Poisson means, identifiable parameters, and sufficiently large fitted cell means for the asymptotic chi-squared law to be accurate. Equivalently, one may condition on the margins and use the corresponding multinomial sampling formulation.

For the $12\times 3$ month table there are $36$ cells and $1+11+2=14$ independent model parameters, so the residual degrees of freedom areSincemodel 1 does not reject Month–Hospital independence at the $1\%$ level.

After combining months into four quarters, the table is $4\times 3$, givingdegrees of freedom. Nowso model 2 rejects Quarter–Hospital independence at the $1\%$ level.

There is no contradiction. Relabelling twelve months as four quarters aggregates the contingency table, changes the null hypothesis, and reduces the degrees of freedom. The quarter-level hospital pattern is coherent enough to cross the much lower six-degree-of-freedom threshold even though the more detailed month-level omnibus test does not. This is an instance of how aggregation can change a contingency-table independence test.