Dr.GutHealth 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.

That is the short version; the long version is somebody else's post.

Dr.GutHealth 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. Printing the relevant bit and taking it with me.

Clinical perspective, offered as context rather than as advice. Whatever the answer turns out to be, the method for getting there is the same: state the assumption, do the arithmetic in public, and invite the correction. That is slower than asserting, and it is the only version that survives being wrong.

Dr.NateNeph said:

Whatever the answer turns out to be, the method for getting there is the same: state the assumption, do the arithmetic in public, and invite the…

This matches mine closely enough to be worth saying so out loud. I had assumed I was the exception until I read this.

Dr.NateNeph said:

Whatever the answer turns out to be, the method for getting there is the same: state the assumption, do the arithmetic in public, and invite the…

Coming at Dr.NateNeph’s question from a different direction. It helps to say which part of this you are uncertain about. A precise question gets a precise answer; a general one gets everybody’s favourite anecdote.