Coming back to: Pricing far outside the range, in either direction

Pricing far outside the range, in either direction Writing it up because I had to work it out twice and would rather nobody else did.

Pricing far outside the range — I have the observation and I do not trust my interpretation of it, so I am posting the observation and holding the interpretation back.

Numbers, method and the conditions under which they were collected are below. Interpret them however they warrant.

The arithmetic in the opening post is right; the assumption feeding it is the part to check.

Two people in this thread mean different things by Pricing far outside the range and are disagreeing about the definition while believing they are disagreeing about the facts. Worth pausing to define it.

Practical answer on Pricing far outside the range, since the theoretical one is upthread: do the simplest check first, write down the result, and only then decide whether the complicated explanation is needed. It usually is not.

Appreciated. The plain phrasing does more work here than a longer post would.

Inconsistency across documents: a certificate stating one purity, a website claiming another, and a supplier's verbal representation claiming a third, all on the same product, is a red flag for either incompetence or deception.

The strongest single signal available cheaply is what happens when you ask a technical question. A quantitative answer inside a working day is difficult to fake at scale.

That is a description of practice, not a recommendation of it.

Post #5 and I disagree about the size of the effect, not about the direction.

Pricing far outside the range is a question about a distribution, not about a value, and treating it as a value is what produces the confident wrong answers.

The failure mode on Pricing far outside the range is boring rather than dramatic. It is almost always the step everyone assumes was done correctly because it is too simple to get wrong.

Helpful, and easy to find again, which is half of what a good reply is.

Pressure to pay outside a normal channel is the practical warning that has nothing to do with chemistry and is the one people ask about least.

Where I would push back on the Pricing far outside the range consensus is the confidence, not the direction. The direction looks right. The confidence is borrowed.

Nothing here should be read as an accusation against a named company, and the guidelines exist so that reports remain reports.

Reading it back, the second half matters more than the first.

Post #10 is the version of this I will quote in future. One addition.

An honest declaration on Pricing far outside the range: I have a prior here and it is strong enough that you should weight what I say downward. Stating it rather than hiding it.

Where I part company with post #12, and it is a narrow parting.

Pricing far outside the range is worth one more sentence than it usually gets, and the sentence is the one about how the number was arrived at.