We have seen the use of linear regression models for continuous variables and logistic regression for binary variables. Another class of variables is called count variables, such as,
The number of claims received per month by an insurance company
Weekly accidents happening in a particular region
The dependent variables (claims or accidents) in these examples have a few standard features. The data represent numbers (counts) or rates (counts per time). They also can only take values of zero or positive discrete numbers. As the Poisson random variable is used to model counts, the relevant regression in the above examples could be Poisson regression.
