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Ask HN: Please seed my survey to raise awareness about obesity

18 pointsby kbrowerabout 15 years ago

20 comments

sounddustabout 15 years ago
I don't know if you're interested in statistics from outside the US, but if so, you should offer the ability to enter height in meters (or cm) and weight in kg.<p>Also, the A8 in "Paris, A8, FR" makes no sense, and it reminds me of those auto-geolocation ads that nonsensically say "Meet women in Paris, A8 now!" You should probably just drop the region altogether for most countries.<p>Finally, I don't think you should show any aggregate data until you get at least 4-5 responses, as you're leaking individual info. For example, just from what I've posted in this comment, anyone can deduct my height and weight from the "stats" on the site, which is not what I expected from filling out a survey (in this case I don't really care, but I'm sure others would).
glymorabout 15 years ago
It's true, Chrome is the lightest browser: <a href="http://obesitynearme.com/browser/" rel="nofollow">http://obesitynearme.com/browser/</a><p>And Vista is indeed significantly heavier: <a href="http://obesitynearme.com/os/" rel="nofollow">http://obesitynearme.com/os/</a><p>Also people from reddit are apparently fat: <a href="http://obesitynearme.com/referrer/" rel="nofollow">http://obesitynearme.com/referrer/</a><p><i>(All results correct at time of publication)</i>
glymorabout 15 years ago
On an individual basis waist-hip ratio <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waist-hip_ratio" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waist-hip_ratio</a> is a better metric. BMI is a tool for populations as a whole.
nbrochuabout 15 years ago
Got a little bug with location... For some reason, it thinks "Montreal, Canada" is located in Ontario, so I kind of warped your results without knowing.<p>Also, and I know this is probably not intentional, but most people outside the United States will cringe when they see "and the rest of the world" with only a map of the states on the page.<p>Other than that, I liked the results page and all the statistics it provided!
brown9-2about 15 years ago
These datapoints are a little scary:<p><i>- Your BMI is 26, which means you are Overweight<p>- Your BMI is lower than 42% of people who submitted this survey<p>- Your BMI is lower than 63% of 27 year olds<p>- Your BMI is lower than 39% of people from news.ycombinator.com </i><p>Sounds as if the people sampled skew young and overweight.<p>Tangentially, is there a better metric for something like this besides BMI? I recall some people having issue with BMI as a measurement, since it doesn't account for what your weight is composed of (fat vs muscle content).<p>edit: for anyone else interested in the shortcomings of BMI, wikipedia seems to have a good summary: <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index#Limitations_and_shortcomings" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index#Limitations_and...</a>
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SapphireSunabout 15 years ago
This is pretty cool. However, I recommend not ranking people in a weight class that equals their weight (IE You are % of people who weigh x lbs) because here will not be enough samples at a specific weight. Try using intervals of 5 lbs.
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r00kabout 15 years ago
Getting the captcha wrong clears all the fields. That's pretty cruel, usability-wise.
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ErrantXabout 15 years ago
Another Kohana user I see :D<p>I caused an error :(<p><a href="http://obesitynearme.com/city/Sleaford/H7/GB/" rel="nofollow">http://obesitynearme.com/city/Sleaford/H7/GB/</a>
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SMrFabout 15 years ago
If this is to raise awareness, you might want to reword the stats. I found them slightly hard to parse.<p>"Your BMI is lower than 37% of people who submitted this survey."<p>This might be better written as, "You are fatter than 60% of people who submitted this survey." Ouch.<p>Also, if obesity is an epidemic then over time won't these results normalize? So I'm fatter than I should be but so is everyone else, so I don't look so bad in these results.
robin_realaabout 15 years ago
Can you get rid of the global letter-spacing? It’s OK for some titles, but it kills the browser’s built-in font kerning and makes everything harder to read.
mrduncanabout 15 years ago
Nifty. One suggestion: let me click on states in the image of the US instead of having to click on the image and then find the state in the list.
maxdemarziabout 15 years ago
"Your BMI is lower than 0% of people from IL"<p>I'm a fat bastard!<p>I'm showing up as Windows 2003, but I'm on Windows XP 64-bit.
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a-prioriabout 15 years ago
<i>Your BMI is lower than 100% of people who submitted this survey</i><p>Is this your way of saying I'm a wimpy nerd? :)
thrdOriginalabout 15 years ago
My location was auto-populated as "Middletown, RI, US" - I manually changed it to be correct (Chicago, IL, US), but when I submitted the results page showed my % in terms of Middletown and in terms of RI. I was confused as to whether it was comparing me to RI for a reason, or if my Chicago input didn't stick.
ottbotabout 15 years ago
Do you plan on only having data for the US? If not, have you considered adding the ability to enter data in metric?
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heyitsnickabout 15 years ago
I can't seem to select any location from England, UK. Typing "England" gives me various options in the US and europe. Typing "London" gives me options in south africa and US. "london, england" returns no results. Similar issues trying my small town or county.
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rezrovsabout 15 years ago
I typed in my location as London, England but on the 'Your Results' page my location had been changed to Ilford K8, GB. It's very difficult to get it to show me the option for London, United Kingdom.
arthurkabout 15 years ago
"Division by zero" error at <a href="http://obesitynearme.com/country/DE/" rel="nofollow">http://obesitynearme.com/country/DE/</a>
julesabout 15 years ago
&#62; Your BMI is lower than 97% of people who submitted this survey<p>And I'm much bigger than a few years ago...
rezrovsabout 15 years ago
And what use is the graph 'Obesity by Operating System'?
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