Comment on Frank Porter, "Confidence intervals for the Poisson distribution"

Fuente: arXiv
Salvato in:
Dettagli Bibliografici
Autore principale: Cousins, Robert D.
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
Soggetti:
Accesso online:
Tags: Aggiungi Tag
Nessun Tag, puoi essere il primo ad aggiungerne!!
_version_ 1866912598849486848
author Cousins, Robert D.
author_facet Cousins, Robert D.
contents Frank Porter has recently posted a review of "Confidence intervals for the Poisson distribution" (arXiv:2509.02852). The long, diverse history of such intervals is closely related to that of confidence intervals for the parameter of the binomial distribution. While much of Porter's paper is enlightening and food for thought, I believe that his discussion of the intervals advocated by Gary Feldman and myself (FC) based on the likelihood ratio test (arXiv:physics/9711021) is flawed. The fundamental point of disagreement is whether or not the likelihood function exists in a part of parameter space where the statistical model does not exist. (The new paper says yes; FC say no.) Here, I focus mainly on that issue and the consequences, along with a few other remarks.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2509_17339
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Comment on Frank Porter, "Confidence intervals for the Poisson distribution"
Cousins, Robert D.
Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability
Frank Porter has recently posted a review of "Confidence intervals for the Poisson distribution" (arXiv:2509.02852). The long, diverse history of such intervals is closely related to that of confidence intervals for the parameter of the binomial distribution. While much of Porter's paper is enlightening and food for thought, I believe that his discussion of the intervals advocated by Gary Feldman and myself (FC) based on the likelihood ratio test (arXiv:physics/9711021) is flawed. The fundamental point of disagreement is whether or not the likelihood function exists in a part of parameter space where the statistical model does not exist. (The new paper says yes; FC say no.) Here, I focus mainly on that issue and the consequences, along with a few other remarks.
title Comment on Frank Porter, "Confidence intervals for the Poisson distribution"
topic Data Analysis, Statistics and Probability
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2509.17339