Past exam of the mathematics course of the University of Cambridge / 2013 / iii / Paper 30 / 3

An exponential dispersion family has density or mass function, relative to a fixed measure,Here $\theta$ is the natural parameter, $b$ is the cumulant function, and $\varphi$ is the dispersion parameter. Assume the natural parameter lies in the interior of its domain and derivatives can pass through the normalizing integral. Differentiating normalization once and twice givesThe variance function is $V(\mu )=b^{\prime \prime }((b^{\prime }{)}^{-1}(\mu ))$, where the mean-to-natural-parameter inverse exists. The dispersion parameter may be fixed, as in a Poisson distribution, rather than estimated.

For $y=0,1,2,\dots$ and $\lambda >0$, the Poisson distribution has massMatch this to the exponential dispersion family withThen $\mu =b^{\prime }(\theta )=e^{\theta }=\lambda$ and $V(\mu )=b^{\prime \prime }(\theta )=\mu$. The canonical link function expresses the natural parameter in terms of the mean, so the Poisson canonical link is $g(\mu )=\log \mu$. Its conditional variance equals its conditional mean.

The coefficient labelled yr2 identifies year as a factor. With $z_i=0$ in the first year and $z_i=1$ in the second, the Poisson regression assumes independent daily counts conditional on year,The unknown mean statistical parameters are the first-year log daily rate ${\beta }_0$ and the second-year log rate ratio ${\beta }_1$; the dispersion parameter is fixed at one. Approximate 95% Wald confidence intervals areExponentiating yields the first-year fitted daily mean $5.978$, with confidence interval $(5.732,6.234)$, andThe second-year fitted daily mean is $e^{1.78810-0.09816}=5.419$. Thus this Poisson regression estimates a 9.35% fall, with an approximate interval for the percentage fall from 3.66% to 14.70%. These confidence intervals rely on the Poisson distribution and independence assumptions.

The Quasi-Poisson regression retains the same conditional mean but permitsThis is a mean–variance function specification through quasi-likelihood; it does not assign a full probability distribution to each count. For independent observations, the quasi-score equation is proportional to ${\sum }_i{x}_i(Y_i-{\mu }_i)=0$, so the mean statistical parameter estimates equal those from Poisson regression. The output estimates $\hat{\varphi }=3.515351$ through the Pearson dispersion estimator, and inflates the standard errors by approximately $\sqrt{\hat{\varphi }}=1.875$.

The large residual deviance relative to 728 residual statistical degrees of freedom also signals substantial overdispersion. Daily weather, traffic and other omitted conditions may produce greater count variation than a homogeneous Poisson distribution allows. The Quasi-Poisson regression accounts for that extra marginal variance. It still requires a correct conditional mean and an appropriate independence assumption; a common dispersion parameter alone does not repair serial correlation.

Under the more plausible Quasi-Poisson regression, the year Wald statistic is $-1.686$, with reported p-value $0.0922$. An approximate 95% confidence interval isThus the estimated fall is about 9.35%, but the data do not establish a reduction at the 5% level after allowing for overdispersion. The interval allows both a sizeable reduction and a small increase. The before–after comparison also lacks a contemporaneous randomized control, so causal inference about the campaign would require addressing other changes between years. The small Poisson regression p-value is not sufficient evidence of a campaign effect when its variance assumption is unsuitable.