You’re completely correct! However, it’s worth noting this is standard practice (when the treatment makes up most of the cost, which it usually doesn’t). Most statisticians will be able to tell you about this.
So I think I have two comments:
It’s actually pretty neat you figured this out by yourself, and shows you have a decent intuition for the subject.
However, if you’re a researcher at any kind of research institution, and you run or design RCTs, this suggests an organizational problem. You’re reinventing the wheel, and need to consult with a statistician. It’s very, very difficult to do good research without a statistician, no matter how clever you are. (If you’d like, I’m happy to help if you send me a DM.)
Actually, maybe I should clarify this. This is standard practice when you hire a decent statistician. We’ve known this since like… the 1940s, maybe?
But a lot of organizations and clinical trials don’t do this because they don’t consult with a statistician early enough. I’ve had people come to me and say “hey, here’s a pile of data, can you calculate a p-value?” too many times to count. Yes, I calculated a p-value, it’s like 0.06, and if you’d come to me at the start of the experiment we could’ve avoided the million-dollar boondoggle
You’re completely correct! However, it’s worth noting this is standard practice (when the treatment makes up most of the cost, which it usually doesn’t). Most statisticians will be able to tell you about this.
So I think I have two comments:
It’s actually pretty neat you figured this out by yourself, and shows you have a decent intuition for the subject.
However, if you’re a researcher at any kind of research institution, and you run or design RCTs, this suggests an organizational problem. You’re reinventing the wheel, and need to consult with a statistician. It’s very, very difficult to do good research without a statistician, no matter how clever you are. (If you’d like, I’m happy to help if you send me a DM.)
Actually, maybe I should clarify this. This is standard practice when you hire a decent statistician. We’ve known this since like… the 1940s, maybe?
But a lot of organizations and clinical trials don’t do this because they don’t consult with a statistician early enough. I’ve had people come to me and say “hey, here’s a pile of data, can you calculate a p-value?” too many times to count. Yes, I calculated a p-value, it’s like 0.06, and if you’d come to me at the start of the experiment we could’ve avoided the million-dollar boondoggle
that you just created.