Recent and classical goodness-of-fit tests for the Poisson distribution

Abstract We give a critical synopsis of classical and recent tests for Poissonity, our emphasis being on procedures which are consistent against general alternatives. Two classes of weighted Cramer–von Mises type test statistics, based on the empirical probability generating function process, are studied in more detail. Both of them generalize already known test statistics by introducing a weighting parameter, thus providing more flexibility with regard to power against specific alternatives. In both cases, we prove convergence in distribution of the statistics under the null hypothesis in the setting of a triangular array of rowwise independent and identically distributed random variables as well as consistency of the corresponding test against general alternatives. Therefore, a sound theoretical basis is provided for the parametric bootstrap procedure, which is applied to obtain critical values in a large-scale simulation study. Each of the tests considered in this study, when implemented via the parametric bootstrap method, maintains a nominal level of significance very closely, even for small sample sizes. The procedures are applied to four well-known data sets.

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