Guidelines revision: what changed and why

Guidelines revision: what changed and why Writing it up because I had to work it out twice and would rather nobody else did.

I was wrong about guidelines revision in a thread last spring and I would like to correct it publicly rather than quietly.

The error was in the units, which changed the conclusion by an order of magnitude. Setting out the corrected version, and the way I now check for that class of mistake.

Worth saying publicly: stepping back cleanly and handing over is a service. Documents with an absent maintainer go wrong quietly, which is the worst way for them to go wrong.

On guidelines revision, the part that usually goes wrong is that the question is asked as though it has one answer. It has a range, and the width of the range is the interesting bit.

If you can post the two or three numbers you are working from, several people here will check the arithmetic rather than argue about the conclusion.

Adding the measurement that post #46 says would settle it.

Announcement about the vendor documentation set. Two pages have had their review dates brought forward because the underlying records changed. The pages themselves say what changed and when, as they always have.

Second-hand, so weight it accordingly.

Post #80 put the caveat in the right place and I want to underline it.

Thank you for announcing it in advance rather than after. The number of places that do the reverse is remarkable.

I am not the right person to answer the follow-up to this.

Confirming post #87 from a second method, which matters more than confirming it from a second person.

Adding a reference point for guidelines revision. Mine is a single case, collected without controls, and I am posting the method alongside it so it can be discounted appropriately.

Source for the guidelines revision figure, since it was asked for. It is in the discussion rather than the abstract, which is why the version circulating is stronger than the paper is.

Reading the surrounding paragraph is worth the two minutes. The authors are more careful than their summarisers.

I had written a reply contradicting post #129 and deleted it. Here is what survived.

Thank you for announcing it in advance rather than after. The number of places that do the reverse is remarkable.

The general case is well covered; this is the awkward specific one.

Building on post #140 rather than restating it.

Guidelines revision is a question about a distribution, not about a value, and treating it as a value is what produces the confident wrong answers.