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Breakup, as captured by my fitbit

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Re: Breakup, as captured by my fitbit

#51

This is fascinating (and sad), but it makes me wonder, could police use your fitness tracker as a sort of poor-mans polygraph? i.e. interview a subject normally, and then get a warrant (or not get a warrant) to view the online data and correlate them after the fact? Wikipedia mentions "blood pressure, pulse, respiration, and skin conductivity" as parameters for a polygraph [1], and while fitbit only supports 2/4 righ…

It'd almost certainly require consent or a warrant to get the data (in the US). But it would have a problem that polygraphs (presumably) attempt to handle. You have no baseline questions and timeline. A stressed individual (being interviewed by the police would be stressful) will look different from an unstressed individual. Without the control questions at the start, you have no basis to draw conclusions from.

> You have no baseline questions and timeline.

I don't think that this will happen, but one can imagine solving this problem by subpoenaing your past FitBit data and social-media record, and correlating the two (by time stamp, which, if maybe not now, then I am sure eventually will be sufficiently fine grained to allow this). I'd imagine that it would be far more accurate than whatever calibration they do now.

Re: Breakup, as captured by my fitbit

#52
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Communication between the couple plummets, and is usually one sided, heavily weighted towards the side doing the breakup. I agree with the first part, but am not so sure about the second. If the breaker-upper doesn't want to break up, then I can believe that he or she will communicate more; but, if the breaker-upper does want to break up, then I can believe that he or she might withdraw and communicate less. (I'm n…

The breaker-upper generally wants to break up right? I mean, that's why they are the breaker-upper.

No. Speaking from my somewhat limited experience with serious relationships [0], I can assure you that every time I broke up with a woman, it was not what I wanted. But when someone tells you something like, "I don't love you, and probably never will. We're ok, right?" Even though you may still desire to be with them (emotions are weird and annoying), there's no way to salvage that relationship. Breaking up can often be pre-emptive in dead-end or bad relationships to avoid further heartache. That doesn't make it desired by the breaker-upper.

[0] Those lasting more than a few weeks, or with a more deeply felt emotional connection. Most likely also a desire to have a future with the partner, and not just a series of dates and screwing and then drifting away to find someone new.

Re: Breakup, as captured by my fitbit

#53

Getting a puppy, as captured by my fitbit: http://i.imgur.com/j9FTleb.png I love my Charge HR for this sort of stuff. It gives me data to double-check my sense of "Something seems off, am I always this stressed?" Days where I'm antsy all day tend to be days I have a higher resting heart rate. Days when I have a higher resting heart rate tend to come after a couple nights of less-than-stellar sleep. It's easy to guess…

Welcome to my sleep-apnea life. The CPAP is only partially effective due to (surprise, surprise) a new allergy to... well, everything airborne, seemingly, including house dust... and even though Allegra does a decent job, sometimes I unconsciously take the thing off in my sleep, and proceed to have a much shittier sleep: http://i.imgur.com/f9oHjqQ.png

Re: Breakup, as captured by my fitbit

#54
post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Got a badge for climbing 33 stairs + a plethora of others, while in actuality I was riding my motorcycle.

A few hours' ride is good for 10K steps. I don't know if it depends on the type of engine or motorcycle brand. I'd love to experiment :-)

I noticed the condition of the road had a significant affect on the readings. I think we could use supervised learning to perhaps determine different activities.

Re: Breakup, as captured by my fitbit

#55
post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Communication between the couple plummets, and is usually one sided, heavily weighted towards the side doing the breakup. I agree with the first part, but am not so sure about the second. If the breaker-upper doesn't want to break up, then I can believe that he or she will communicate more; but, if the breaker-upper does want to break up, then I can believe that he or she might withdraw and communicate less. (I'm n…

The breaker-upper generally wants to break up right? I mean, that's why they are the breaker-upper.

I agree that the language was a bit strange. I edited my post to try to clarify, but I think that Jtsummers (https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10933737 )'s reply is probably clearer than my edit.

Re: Breakup, as captured by my fitbit

#56
post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'd almost certainly require consent or a warrant to get the data (in the US). But it would have a problem that polygraphs (presumably) attempt to handle. You have no baseline questions and timeline. A stressed individual (being interviewed by the police would be stressful) will look different from an unstressed individual. Without the control questions at the start, you have no basis to draw conclusions from.

> You have no baseline questions and timeline. I don't think that this will happen, but one can imagine solving this problem by subpoenaing your past FitBit data and social-media record, and correlating the two (by time stamp, which, if maybe not now, then I am sure eventually will be sufficiently fine grained to allow this). I'd imagine that it would be far more accurate than whatever calibration they do now.

Yeah. Protomyth made the point about aggregating biometric data with other data (shopping, akin to the Target pregnancy notice letter, browsing, etc.). That could be effective, if the sensors and social media, shopping, other data were available.

I know everyone (or most people) get hunches about what's going to happen by observing other people's behavior. Whether it was predicting a break-up, guessing that someone was pregnant, or in a new relationship. The glut of data available now would likely reveal a lot if we allowed it to be aggregated.

I guess I shouldn't have thought so narrowly about just biometrics (and heart rates, in particular).

Re: Breakup, as captured by my fitbit

#57

Getting a puppy, as captured by my fitbit: http://i.imgur.com/j9FTleb.png I love my Charge HR for this sort of stuff. It gives me data to double-check my sense of "Something seems off, am I always this stressed?" Days where I'm antsy all day tend to be days I have a higher resting heart rate. Days when I have a higher resting heart rate tend to come after a couple nights of less-than-stellar sleep. It's easy to guess…

Exciting chart! I'm curious: are Nov 14/15 outliers or did you really manage to return to your previous sleeping time suddenly after two weeks? (If so, how?) (Might be too personal to ask?)

(I guess if I'd ever get a dog I'd get us both activity trackers so I could correlate the data.)

Re: Breakup, as captured by my fitbit

#58
post #2

I once left my fitbit in the wash (and then dryer) and was wondering why I was suddenly getting all these "congrats on hitting your steps goal!" alerts on my phone.

Got a badge for climbing 33 stairs + a plethora of others, while in actuality I was riding my motorcycle.

I think my best was 125 stories, over a mountain pass.

Re: Breakup, as captured by my fitbit

#60
post #35

This just reminds me on how no one has made the killer app for all these sensors. It's just data, no one has shown me how to make myself better from all this data.

Data (and QS generally) can't help you change your personality, your mannerisms, etc...but it might be useful in catching an underlying medical condition.
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