Ernesto Ramirez

November 8, 2014

We had a lot of fun putting together this week’s list. Enjoy!

Articles
A Spreadsheet Way of Knowledge by Steven Levy. A few weeks ago we noted that it was the 35th anniversary of the digital spreadsheet. Steven Levy noticed too and dug up this piece he wrote for Harpers in 1984. If you read nothing else today, read this. First, because we should know where our tools come from, their history and inventors. And second, but not last nor least, because it has wonderful quotes like this:

“The spreadsheet is a tool, and it is also a world view — reality by the numbers.”

The Ethics of Experimenting on Yourself by Amy Dockser Markus. With new companies cropping up to help individuals collect and share their personal data there has been an increased interest in citizen science. A short piece here at the Wall Street Journal lays the groundwork for what may become a contentious debate between the old vanguards of the scientific institution and the companies and citizens pushing the envelope. (The article is behind a paywall, but we’ve archived it here.)

Better All The Time by James Surowiecki. I started reading this thinking it would be another good piece about the digitization of sport performance and training, and it was, but only partly. What begins with sports turns into a fascinating look at how we are succeeding, and in some cases failing, to improve.

Article 29 Data Protection Working Party: Opinion 8/2014 on the Recent Developments on the Internet of Things. Do not let the obscure boring title fool you, this is an important document, especially if you’re interested in personal data, data privacy, and data protection rights. Most interesting to me was the summary of six challenges facing IoT data privacy and protection. I’m also left wondering if other countries may follow the precedents possibly set by this EU Working Party.

30 Little-Known Features of the Health and Fitness Apps You Use Every Day by Ash Read / AddApp. Our friends at AddApp.io put together a great list of neat things you may or may not know you can do with various health and fitness apps.

Man Uses Twitter to Augment his Damaged Memory by John Paul Tiltow. Wonderful piece here about Thomas Dixon, who uses Twitter to help document his life after suffering a traumatic brain injury that severely diminished his episodic memory. What makes it more interesting is that it’s not just a journal, but also a source of inspiration for personal data analysis:

”Sometimes if I have like an hour, I’ll be like ‘How’s the last week been?’“ Dixon says. ”I’ll look at the past week and I’ll go, ‘Oh, okay. I really do want to get a run in.’ So I will use it to influence certain decisions.”

Patients and Data – Changing roles and relationships by David Gilbert and Mark Doughty. Another nice article about the ever-changing landscape that is the patient/provide/insurer ecosystem.

Show&Tell
The Quantified Anatomy of a Paper by Mohammed AlQuaraishi. Mohammed is a Systems Biology Fellow at Harvard Medical School, and he’s an avid self-tracker. In this post he lays out what he’s learned through tracking the life of a successful project, a journal publication (read it here), and how he’s applying what he learned to another project.

Calories In, Calories Out by (author unknown). A fascinating post about modeling weight reduction over time and testing to see if said model actually matches up with recorded weight. Not all math and formulas here though,

“I learned several interesting things from this experiment.  I learned that it is really hard to accurately measure calories consumed, even if you are trying.  (Look at the box and think about this the next time you pour a bowl of cereal, for example.)  I learned that a chicken thigh loses over 40% of its weight from grilling.  And I learned that, somewhat sadly, mathematical curiosity can be an even greater motivation than self-interest in personal health.”

Fitness Tracker on a Cat – Java’s Story by Pearce H. Delphin. A delightful post here about tracking and learning about a cat’s behavior by making it wear at Fitbit. Who said QS has to be serious all the time?!

Visualizations

100 Days of Quantified Self by Matt Yancey. Matt downloaded his Fitbit Flex data using our data export how-to then set out analyzing and visualizing the data. Make sure to click through for the full visualization.

IAMI by Ligoranoreese. If you’re in San Francisco consider stoping by the Catherine Clark Gallery for this interesting exhibit. The duo, Ligoranoreese, created woven fiber optic artwork based on Fitbit data.

List of Physical Visualizations. I can’t say it any better than Mortiz Stefaner: “Remember that epic list of data sculptures and physical data visualizations? Well, it became more epic.”

From the Forum
Anyone have a good way to aggregate and visualize data?
Questions about personal health tracking
Hello QS
Call for Papers: special issue of JBHI on Sensor Informatics
Sleep Tracking Device – BodyEcho