LibrarianMeg 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…

Coming at LibrarianMeg’s question from a different direction. The mechanism and the magnitude are separate questions. Agreeing that something happens says nothing about whether it happens enough to act on.

Adding the numbers, since they settle part of this. If you are comparing against somebody else’s result, check that you are comparing the same measurement taken the same way. Most of the apparent contradictions in these threads dissolve at that step.

Ask again with the specifics and you will get a better answer than this one.

One thing that is still open after LibrarianMeg’s answer:

How would you tell the difference between that and the alternative explanation?

quinn_sf said:

If you are comparing against somebody else’s result, check that you are comparing the same measurement taken the same way.

This is where I part company with the consensus forming above. 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.

quinn_sf said:

If you are comparing against somebody else’s result, check that you are comparing the same measurement taken the same way.

Agreed, and one caution: a single measurement is not a measurement. Anything that moves day to day needs a trend before it means anything at all.