Minitab®  Support

Enter your data for 1-Sample Poisson Rate

Learn more about Minitab

Stat > Basic Statistics > 1-Sample Poisson Rate

Specify the data and the null hypothesis for your analysis.

In This Topic

Enter your data

Select the option that best describes your data.

One or more samples, each in a column

Complete the following steps if your data are in a column of the worksheet.

  1. From the drop-down list, select One or more samples, each in a column.
  2. In Sample columns, enter the column of count data that you want to analyze.
    Tip

    Click in Sample columns to see the columns that are available for your analysis.

    In this worksheet, Accidents contains the sample data and indicates the number of accidents that occur at a factory each month.
    C1
    Accidents
    2
    4
    1
    0
    2
  3. (Optional) If you have a column that indicates the frequency of each unique count, enter it in Frequency columns. Frequency columns summarize the number of times that the value in the Sample columns occur.

    In this worksheet, Accidents indicates the count of accidents that occur at a factory each month. Frequency contains the number of months that each accident count occurs. For example, the first row of the worksheet shows that 0 accidents occurred in 3 different months.

    C1 C2
    Accidents Frequency
    0 3
    1 2
    2 1
    3 2

Summarized data

Complete the following steps if you have summary statistics for the sample, rather than actual sample data in the worksheet.

  1. From the drop-down list, select Summarized data.
  2. Enter the summary statistics in Sample size and Total occurrences. The total occurrences is the number of times an event occurs in the sample.

Perform hypothesis test

If you want to calculate a p-value to determine whether the mean differs from a hypothesized mean, you must perform a hypothesis test.
  1. Use a hypothesis test to determine whether the population rate (denoted as λ) differs significantly from the hypothesized rate (denoted as λ0) that you specify. If you don't perform the test, Minitab still displays a confidence interval, which is a range of values that is likely to include the population rate. For more information, go to What is a hypothesis test?.
  2. The Hypothesized rate defines your null hypothesis (H0: λ = λ0). Think of this value as a target value or a reference value. For example, an analyst enters 48 as the hypothesized rate to determine whether the number of transactions per hour is different from 48 (H0: λ = 48).
Copyright © 2025 Minitab, LLC. All rights Reserved.