Monthly Archives: August 2014

Recommended: Communicating Statistical Findings to Consulting Clients Operating in a Decisionmaking Climate: Best and Worst Practices

There were a large number of excellent talks at the 2014 Joint Statistics Meeting. This session discusses practical issues associated with communication. Although I did not attend this session, it looks pretty good and the speakers have all placed their slides in a single location. Continue reading

Recommended: Sample size of 12 per group rule of thumb for a pilot study

This study is (sadly) not available for free on the Internet, but it is still worth highlighting here. Steven Julious provides some justification for the use of twelve patients per group in a pilot study. This is a useful starting point for discussion, and it may serve as a useful lower bound. I would suggest that you consider the size of the larger trial that you are piloting. For a larger study that might require thousands or tens of thousands of patients, a pilot study of 12 patients per group is woefully inadequate. Continue reading