T test for poisson distribution I have a sample ($n = 10$) from a Poisson distribution. It was said that the t test with 9 degrees of freedom cannot be used to test $H_0: \lambda = 5$ against $H_1: \lambda \ne 5$.
I know that a Poisson distribution can be approximated by a Normal one for "big" sample sizes. Since we have here $n=10$, is this the reason the t test can't be applied here?
 A: Consider the sum $T =\sum_{i=1}^{10} X_i,$ where $X_i \stackrel{iid}{\sim} \mathsf{Pois}(\lambda = 5).$ Then $T \sim \mathsf{Pois}(\lambda_{10}=50),$
and $P(T \le 36) + P(T \ge 65) \approx 0.048.$ In R:
ppois(36, 50)
[1] 0.02375891
1-ppois(64, 50)
[1] 0.02360321

Thus an exact test of $H_0: \lambda = 5$ vs. $H_a: \lambda \ne 5$ at about the 4.8% level is to reject $H_0$ for $T \le 36$ or $T \ge 65.$

The distribution $\mathsf{Pois}(50)$ is approximately $\mathsf{Norm}(\mu=50, \sigma-\sqrt{50}),$ so a normal approximation to the exact test is easy to find.
Student's t distribution with 9 degrees of freedom is not an appropriate null distribution for your test, and I see no reason to use it (or any other t distribution).
[Doing a one-sample t test on Poisson data would compound the inaccuracy by using the sample standard
deviation $S$ to approximate the known standard deviation of the null distribution.]
A: Maybe this is useful:
Making the comparison between using the t-test and the approach by BruceET:

# T-student:

B <- 100000

power_p <- numeric(8)

lower_t <- qt(0.025, 9)
upper_t <- qt(0.975, 9)

for(i in 1:8){
  for (j in 1:B){
    my_sample <- rpois(10, i)
    t_stat[j] <- (mean(my_sample) - 5) / (sd(my_sample)/sqrt(10))
  }
  
  
power_t[i] <-  mean(t_stat <= lower_t | t_stat >= upper_t)
  
}

#Poisson:

power_p <- numeric(8)

low_n <- qnorm(0.025, 50, sqrt(50))
up_n <- qnorm(0.975, 50, sqrt(50))

for(i in 1:8){
  for (j in 1:B){
    my_sample <- rpois(10, i)
    T_s[j] <- sum(my_sample)
  }
  
  
  power_p[i] <-  mean(T_s <= low_n | T_s >= up_n)
  
}
> power_p
[1] 1.00000 0.99960 0.88010 0.29759 0.05589 0.32168 0.77828 0.97092
> power_t
[1] 1.00000 0.99872 0.86741 0.32308 0.05239 0.18314 0.57013 0.87494

Can be seen what would be the problem of using a t-test in this case, the power of the t-test is lower.
Another option to get the confidence interval could be a simple monte carlo simulation.
