Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2003 iii Paper 38 2 Solution Created 2026-10-03 Updated 2026-10-14
The prose names a second year that differs from the table label. The calculations use the four supplied counts, interpreting the first and second rows as the two displayed periods; no numerical conclusion depends on resolving that label discrepancy.
The first generalized linear model treats the four counts as independent Poisson random variables, with a log link and both row and column regression factors. The row-by-column interaction makes the log-linear model saturated. With , writeIts four maximum-likelihood fitted values equal the observed counts. Thus , , , andThe interaction is the log odds ratio measuring association of row and column. Under independent Poisson sampling, the delta-method variances are for the intercept, for the row contrast, for the column contrast, and for the interaction. Their square roots reproduce the printed standard errors. Although the software labels the standardized ratios as t values, these are asymptotic normal Wald statistics, with known Poisson dispersion one, not exact finite-df Student tests.
The statistical saturated model has zero residual deviance and zero residual degrees of freedom; this is a perfect interpolation, not evidence of predictive adequacy. The null deviance compares the four observed counts with an intercept-only model, whose four fitted means are . Fisher scoring is the numerical score/information iteration used to fit the model; the iteration count is a convergence report, not a test statistic.
Dropping the interaction gives the independence log-linear model for a two-way contingency table, . Its Poisson regression margin-matching score equations match the row and column totals, soHere and denote the observed row and column totals. In particular the fitted row multiplier is , the column multiplier is , and the intercept is . These produce the second coefficient table. Their standard errors follow from the inverse Fisher information matrix; for the row and column contrasts their squared values are and , while the intercept variance is .
The Poisson deviance relative to the saturated fit isThe linear terms cancel because fitted and observed totals agree. The additive model has three coefficients, leaving one degree of freedom. Wilks theorem calibrates this likelihood-ratio test approximately by , giving . The interaction Wald test instead gives ; the two are only asymptotically equivalent.
Fisher's exact test conditions on both margins under independence. If is the upper-left count, thenIts usual two-sided p-value sums the probabilities of all tables no more probable than the observed . That sum is , reproducing the output without an asymptotic approximation. It tests the same absence of row-column association, but conditioning and discreteness explain the numerical difference from the likelihood-ratio test.
In ordinary language, the male proportion among the cases is in the first row and in the second. The estimated case-sex odds ratio is , but its approximate 95-percent confidence interval is wide, . These small samples do not give convincing evidence that the sex composition of cases changed between the two periods. Failure to reject is not evidence that the compositions are exactly equal. Nor do these counts establish a male-to-female disease-incidence ratio or an incidence trend: population denominators and comparable ascertainment would be needed for those interpretations.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2017 ii Paper 4 5J a Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-05
This is the appropriate command for the full contingency table. It fits a log-linear model to the nine cell counts, with logarithmic link function and no interaction:With baseline constraints on , there are five parameters. The factorized means express independence of treatment group and damage category. The maximum-likelihood estimates areAlthough the experiment fixes each row total at 30, conditioning these independent Poisson random variables on those totals produces the appropriate row-wise multinomial distribution. The Poisson trick therefore gives the correct likelihood inference for this independence log-linear model for a two-way contingency table; the margins are nuisance parameters. It tests whether treatment changes the distribution of damage, rather than modelling a binary outcome.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2018 ii Paper 3 5J Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-10-03
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 month table there are cells and independent model parameters, so the residual degrees of freedom areSincemodel 1 does not reject Month–Hospital independence at the level.
After combining months into four quarters, the table is , givingdegrees of freedom. Nowso model 2 rejects Quarter–Hospital independence at the 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.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 ii Paper 1 13J a Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-29
Let be the number of ice creams in price category and score category . The fitted Poisson regression assumes that the nine counts are independent random variables withwhere the logarithmic link function is used and excellent is the reference level in a regression factor, so . Equivalently,This is the independence log-linear model for a two-way contingency table: price and score have main effects but no interaction.
Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge 2019 ii Paper 1 13J c Solution Created 2026-09-24 Updated 2026-09-29
The null hypothesis is that price and score are independent, equivalently that the independence log-linear model for a two-way contingency table is correct. Against the saturated alternative, the reported Poisson deviance is the likelihood-ratio test statisticUnder the null and the usual large-sample regularity assumptions, Wilks theorem givesThe observations must be independent, the cell probabilities must not lie on the boundary of the parameter space, and the expected counts must be large enough for the chi-squared asymptotic approximation. The fitted counts are either or , so the customary expected-count check is comfortably satisfied. Since(equivalently, the p-value is about ), we do not reject the null at the significance level. The data provide no significant lack of fit for independence.