What?

Could it not just be the after-effects of the 'performance adrenaline' wearing off? Especially if you put your all into them last night, it often seems to work that it is very difficult to also do this the day after.

Hmmm, I thought about this and it is certainly a possibility. We are going through an eliminations process as a first regime. I have performed at school concerts and the like before and have usually been more or less at the same performance level the following day.

Of course we have to make some statistical sense of it all and this is where we need the experiences from others so that we can set a result/null result and blind trial. (sorry for the jargon). You made a very good point though!

Fear not, I did a statistics module at A-level! Although in my experience music appears not to follow statistics.

I think it was Rubinstein who once said something along the lines of: 'Before one concert, I specifically took every effort to make everything go well, I got plenty of sleep the night before, I relaxed throughtout the day and got completely ready well in advance and the concert was appalling, I made several mistakes. Another time, I came on a very uncomfortable train and got virtually no sleep, arrived half and hour bfore the concert was due to start and looked in a right state, and that was one of the greatest performances of my life'

Please excuse the paraphrasing, I can't find the quote. Music is very unpredictable in so many ways. Have you tried playing the pieces again?

Unfortunately Roger your search for the causal element in your rigorous limbs is unlikely to be ascertained beyond doubt by a retrospective association analysis. While diet related stochastic factors could impact upon musculoskeletal physiology in the deleterious manner in which you describe it would be too easy to implicate confounding factors and to miss the true causal, if indeed, it existed.

The results of a prospective randomised trial would provide gold standard evidence for the causality or otherwise of your gastronomic suspect. However, I would fear that it would be difficult to adequately achieve such blinding due to the taste, smell and texture of your cibal administration having to be perfectly matched. Additionally, you would need to perform prospective power studies to determine adequate sample sizes for your case-control cohort so as to minimise the possibility of a type 1 error. Do you have a possible relative risk in mind?

Dangermouse

That's really impressive, Dangermouse!

Does this mean you would use a chi-squared test then?
Perhaps it would be best to start off with a pilot study...
Would you consider block randomisation?
Wonder where we can get funding from?
And who would like to volunteer filling in the ethics application form?

Quite plainly this requires a two-tailed-T-test.

Maybe you can only play after a few sangrias That kind of prospective analysis I'd be up for

Chopin

a) Yes - with a continuity correction in SPSS - hope we can get all cell values >5
Feasibility of getting sufficient numbers for the main study, unfortunately separate applications would be needed to the ethics committee - wouldn't want to do that with stiff fingers while playing the Ballade - especially the presto bit where, because my hands aren't particularly big I sometimes hit the Bb when playing the F#-A-F# broken sixths...
c) Possibly, if there was anything else appealing on the menu I may slip in to the study myself....
d) Spanish Institute for Chopin Kinetics (SICK)
e) My cat Jeffrey - 'twill stop him chasing me for a bit

Squeak, squeak

El Mousa Dangerosa,

On first reading this I thought this was the response of a very small long-tailed rodent ( Raton pienso la palabra mas que apropiado por 'el raton peligro'). Hmmmm I was right.

squeak squeak!!

Sniff! Sniff! a rodent with halitosis , pooooooh, smell it all the way down here in sunny Spain. Squeaky please, please sign up for our null square, double tailed T, regression programme. You'll feel at home with all the other laboratory specimens we have down here. You'll particularly enjoy the colonic washout, which is carried out so that we can use a least squares integration, parameter analysis which measures the total number of brain cells passed in your stools. I'm using a modal model to predict most of yours are in your Anal Recess Spheroidal Endothelium.

Suzy Quack is our pre-registration house officer specialising in podiatrics(when she gets time off from her piano student/teacher programme and cafe wine tasting) and is deft at clipping teeeny weeeny mousy claws. She's not a registered medic as yet, but you mind that will you?. We'll even lay on "Stephen Hough-Wood in disguise" to play the Ballade in G, (even though he has advanced carpal arthritis), while the clippings procedure is being carried out.

Come on 'Squeaky', my little smelly, friend, what do you say? We can send some guys in white coats to collect you, from you bolthole, whooops! mousehole. Bring you feline friend if you wish, you'll need some company.