Dr.KarenChen 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.KarenChen’s question from a different direction. It helps to ask what evidence would change your mind before you look at any. If nothing would, the discussion is not about evidence, and it is better to say so early than to spend nine posts discovering it.

Adding the numbers, since they settle part of this. Give anything pharmacological four weeks before you judge it, and give anything measured weekly a four-point rolling average before you call it a trend.

Happy to go further on any of that.

One thing that is still open after Dr.KarenChen’s answer:

Did your prescriber agree with that reading, and if not what was their objection?

Dr.PeteFamMed 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…

This is where I part company with the consensus forming above. Filing an objection on the n=1 problem. Personal experience is genuine evidence about one person and very weak evidence about anybody else, and this thread keeps promoting the first into the second.

Dr.PeteFamMed 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.