Dr.NateNeph said:

Give anything pharmacological four weeks before you judge it, and give anything measured weekly a four-point rolling average before you call it a…

Pushing back on Dr.NateNeph here. Pushing back on the consensus forming here. Consistency is not the same as correctness, and a board that agrees with itself quickly is usually agreeing with the first person who sounded certain.

Dr.NateNeph said:

Give anything pharmacological four weeks before you judge it, and give anything measured weekly a four-point rolling average before you call it a…

That is right, and it stops being right at the edges. The general case is well behaved; the interesting cases in this thread are all at the boundary where the general case breaks.

Dr.NateNeph said:

Give anything pharmacological four weeks before you judge it, and give anything measured weekly a four-point rolling average before you call it a…

That reframing is the part I needed.

Clinical perspective, offered as context rather than as advice. Order of operations matters more than any single choice here: establish a baseline, change one thing, wait long enough for it to express itself, then measure again under the same conditions.

pete_nash said:

Order of operations matters more than any single choice here: establish a baseline, change one thing, wait long enough for it to express itself, then…

This is my experience too, for whatever a second data point is worth.