Inference Procedures on the Ratio of Modified Generalized Poisson Distribution Means: Applications to RNA_SEQ Data

Abstract

: The Poisson and the Negative Binomial distributions are commonly used as analytic tools to model count data. The Poisson is characterized by the equality of mean and variance whereas the Negative Binomial has a variance larger than the mean and therefore is appropriate to model over-dispersed count data. The Generalized Poisson Distribution is becoming a popular alternative to the Negative Binomial. We have considered inference procedures on a modified form of this distribution when two samples are available from two independent populations and the target effect size of interest is the ratio of the two population means. The statistical objective is to construct confidence limits on the ratio. We first test the presence of over dispersion and derive several estimators in the single sample situation. When two samples are available, our interest is focused on the estimation of an effect size measured by the ratio of the respective population means. We have compared two methods; namely the Fieller’s and the delta methods in terms of coverage probabilities. We have illustrated the methodologies on published genomic datasets.