One concrete data point for the thread. Practical: whatever you change, write down the date and the reason. In three months the reason is what you will have forgotten, and the reason is what makes the record worth having.
A narrower follow-up, since the general answer is now clear:
What did you change at the same time, and can you separate the two now?
Found this through search years later and it is still the best discussion of the question, so adding one thing. 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.
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Shop Reference Standardsstefan_berlin said:Practical: whatever you change, write down the date and the reason.
That holds where the measurement is reliable. Where it is noisy — and a lot of what gets tracked here is noisy — the same reasoning produces confident nonsense.
stefan_berlin said:Practical: whatever you change, write down the date and the reason.
That reframing is the part I needed. Printing the relevant bit and taking it with me.