A medical device company approached me with the following problem. Scientists had written academic journal articles about their product, but the sales force couldn’t understand what they said. My task was to read the articles, then tell the people in sales what the articles were saying in laymen’s terms.
One of the questions that came up was how to compare two studies with different sample sizes. Of course there are many factors involved, but I said that as a general rule of thumb, a study with four times the sample size will give confidence intervals that are half as wide. They loved that. In the midst of what to them was a sea of statistical mumbo jumbo, here was something they could grab onto. I also pointed out a few things I thought doctors would want to hear and two or three buzzwords the sales people should learn.
The scientific literature on their product was favorable, but the company was not able to convey this because the sales reps didn’t have the words to use. I gave them the words by translating scientific jargon to simple language.
If you’d like for me to give your sales team the words they need, please contact me.
Speaking of comparing results across different sample sizes, this is one of the great features of p-values: that their interpretation is completely independent of the sample size. (Of course, you have to apply the correct interpretation!)