A friend had been struggling to find regular physical activity for a few years. She complained enough about a lack of motivation that her brother gave her a low-end Fitbit for Christmas. Somehow the pedometer function clicked for her. Being able to see the numbers of steps was as motivating for her as filling in circles on an Apple Watch is for other people. On top of this she'd heard about the magic 10,000 step number. Initially the goal was beyond her, but she was motivated and within a couple of weeks she was there. She's kept it up and regularly does 15,000 a day along with increasing her speed. Her blood pressure is down from last year's number and she feels healthier.
In the 60s a Japanese company marketed a pedometer known as the Manpo-kei - which translates to the ten thousand step meter. The pedometer became a fad and somehow the 10,000 step goal was enshrined in popular culture. There's no reason why the number means anything other than being something like five miles of walking for most people. That's over an hour of walking and good exercise. So people who aim for the number are getting a good benefit because the general direction of walking a lot is healthy rather than the number being the "right" target.
The NY Times recently ran an article on some inaccuracies in smart watches. It doesn't surprise me. I've been around Olympic programs and athletes for a few years and know some horror stories about the over-reliance of data when you don't know it's accuracy or the context of the measurement or its use. Like anything else with data, you need to know why, what and how you're measuring, manipulating, and finally interpreting and using the information. In sport that turns out to be difficult. There are a number of interesting approaches to deal with the issues, but that's another post.
The NY Times piece and elite training experience suggest broad trends over time are much more important than local accuracy and precision If you're trying to improve your fitness level or play amateur level sports, the motivation from a smartwatch can make a big difference. If you're an elite athlete there are many other things to consider and it's likely you're taking advantage of them.
The notion of broad trend over local accuracy has utility in many areas. One that frustrates me is building carbon dioxide removal technology. It's something of a delaying tactic being cheerleaded by the petrochemical and coal industries. In reality it's extremely expensive, requires a large amount of energy and diverts funding from much more effective technologies and behaviors. Currently four 1 million ton class plants are on the drawing board. With luck each could remove a million tons of carbon from the atmosphere by 2030 or so with a projected cost of about a billion dollars each. So how much of an impact is that?
A million tons of carbon dioxide is about 1/40,000 of current yearly emissions. That's roughly the same ratio as a teaspoon to a bathtub full of water. Imagine running the tub and in the time it takes to fill it, you can remove a teaspoon of water. The bathtub keeps running.. in the time another tub of water comes out of the spigot, you can remove a second teaspoon. And then a third, forth and so on.
We currently have many deployable technologies and behaviors that will turn the tap down much more than a teaspoon worth for far less money. When we're finally down to the point where we're only putting a gallon or so of water into the tub each year, then it might make sense to deploy a number of teaspoons to make a difference for where it's difficult to turn the tap (aviation and shipping for example)
Spend some money and talent learning how to improve the process, but don't count on it in the near term as it isn't, and will never be, a silver bullet. Nothing it. all we can hope for is silver buckshot and using as much as we can possibly afford. It makes sense to use the buckshot with the greatest cost/benefit ratio - things like wind, solar, better power grids, efficient transportation (full sized EVs don't count!), and any number of energy thrifty behaviors.
And finally home runs and climate change. Recently a paper made the major news outlets with projections that climate change will have an impact on Major League Baseball home runs: "Several hundred additional home runs per season are projected due to future warming." The paper is poorly done .. basically a sensitivity analysis based on a single variable. I won't give it the credibility of a link. Something that doesn't work in the real world with something as complex as baseball. I have a some expertise in the fluid dynamics of balls flying through the air and would argue the effect is small. In fact they note the same thing, but word the conclusion to make it appear there is an effect and climate change impacts everything. This is pure clickbait for news organizations and probably has the impact of diverting attention from much more serious issues associated with global warming. It's trivial to see the home run impact is insignificant, but a poorly done analysis can lead to fuzzy thinking and even harm.
manpo-kei, gold plated teaspoons and home runs
A friend had been struggling to find regular physical activity for a few years. She complained enough about a lack of motivation that her brother gave her a low-end Fitbit for Christmas. Somehow the pedometer function clicked for her. Being able to see the numbers of steps was as motivating for her as filling in circles on an Apple Watch is for other people. On top of this she'd heard about the magic 10,000 step number. Initially the goal was beyond her, but she was motivated and within a couple of weeks she was there. She's kept it up and regularly does 15,000 a day along with increasing her speed. Her blood pressure is down from last year's number and she feels healthier.
The NY Times recently ran an article on some inaccuracies in smart watches. It doesn't surprise me. I've been around Olympic programs and athletes for a few years and know some horror stories about the over-reliance of data when you don't know it's accuracy or the context of the measurement or its use. Like anything else with data, you need to know why, what and how you're measuring, manipulating, and finally interpreting and using the information. In sport that turns out to be difficult. There are a number of interesting approaches to deal with the issues, but that's another post.
The NY Times piece and elite training experience suggest broad trends over time are much more important than local accuracy and precision If you're trying to improve your fitness level or play amateur level sports, the motivation from a smartwatch can make a big difference. If you're an elite athlete there are many other things to consider and it's likely you're taking advantage of them.
The notion of broad trend over local accuracy has utility in many areas. One that frustrates me is building carbon dioxide removal technology. It's something of a delaying tactic being cheerleaded by the petrochemical and coal industries. In reality it's extremely expensive, requires a large amount of energy and diverts funding from much more effective technologies and behaviors. Currently four 1 million ton class plants are on the drawing board. With luck each could remove a million tons of carbon from the atmosphere by 2030 or so with a projected cost of about a billion dollars each. So how much of an impact is that?
A million tons of carbon dioxide is about 1/40,000 of current yearly emissions. That's roughly the same ratio as a teaspoon to a bathtub full of water. Imagine running the tub and in the time it takes to fill it, you can remove a teaspoon of water. The bathtub keeps running.. in the time another tub of water comes out of the spigot, you can remove a second teaspoon. And then a third, forth and so on.
We currently have many deployable technologies and behaviors that will turn the tap down much more than a teaspoon worth for far less money. When we're finally down to the point where we're only putting a gallon or so of water into the tub each year, then it might make sense to deploy a number of teaspoons to make a difference for where it's difficult to turn the tap (aviation and shipping for example)
Spend some money and talent learning how to improve the process, but don't count on it in the near term as it isn't, and will never be, a silver bullet. Nothing it. all we can hope for is silver buckshot and using as much as we can possibly afford. It makes sense to use the buckshot with the greatest cost/benefit ratio - things like wind, solar, better power grids, efficient transportation (full sized EVs don't count!), and any number of energy thrifty behaviors.
And finally home runs and climate change. Recently a paper made the major news outlets with projections that climate change will have an impact on Major League Baseball home runs: "Several hundred additional home runs per season are projected due to future warming." The paper is poorly done .. basically a sensitivity analysis based on a single variable. I won't give it the credibility of a link. Something that doesn't work in the real world with something as complex as baseball. I have a some expertise in the fluid dynamics of balls flying through the air and would argue the effect is small. In fact they note the same thing, but word the conclusion to make it appear there is an effect and climate change impacts everything. This is pure clickbait for news organizations and probably has the impact of diverting attention from much more serious issues associated with global warming. It's trivial to see the home run impact is insignificant, but a poorly done analysis can lead to fuzzy thinking and even harm.
Posted at 07:50 AM in building insight, critical thinking, general comments, society and technology, sports | Permalink | Comments (0)
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