Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2012 / iii / Paper 37 / 4 / b / Solution

The saturated model estimates each Poisson mean separately as $Y_i$, permitting the boundary value zero when $Y_i=0$. Subtracting fitted from saturated log-likelihood gives the Poisson deviancewith $0\log (0/{\hat{\mu }}_i)=0$. A zero observation contributes $2{\hat{\mu }}_i$. If the model includes an intercept, the score equation gives ${\sum }_i{Y}_i={\sum }_i{\hat{\mu }}_i$, so the summed linear terms cancel; the unsimplified expression applies generally.

For goodness of fit, the null hypothesis is that the specified independent Poisson mean model is correct; the alternative is an unrestricted collection of means. When a quadratic likelihood approximation is valid, for example with fixed $n$ and large expected counts, $D$ has approximately a chi-squared distribution with $n-p$ statistical degrees of freedom. Reject for a large upper-tail deviance. Merely increasing the number of sparse observations does not make this saturated-model reference reliable: the alternative dimension also increases. With small fitted means, replication-based checks or a parametric bootstrap are more defensible. This qualification concerns the absolute goodness-of-fit deviance; a fixed-dimensional nested likelihood-ratio comparison can have a better chi-squared approximation.