4 ms·

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

18 points by kbrower 17y ago

robin_reala 17y 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.
a-priori 17y ago
Your BMI is lower than 100% of people who submitted this survey Is this your way of saying I'm a wimpy nerd? :)
ErrantX 17y ago
Another Kohana user I see :D I caused an error :( http://obesitynearme.com/city/Sleaford/H7/GB/ http://obesitynearme.com/city/Sleaford/H7/GB/
- kbrower 17y ago
  Yeah, Kohana is great! Thanks for catching that error. It has been fixed.
ottbot 17y ago
Do you plan on only having data for the US? If not, have you considered adding the ability to enter data in metric?
- kbrower 17y ago
  I have just considered it, and I will add it.
  - garyrichardson 17y ago
    Looks like there are a few other Canadians trying this out. I would definitely pass it on to friends if it showed a provincial break down as well.
r00k 17y ago
Getting the captcha wrong clears all the fields. That's pretty cruel, usability-wise.
- kbrower 17y ago
  I will fix this
mrduncan 17y 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.
maxdemarzi 17y ago
"Your BMI is lower than 0% of people from IL" I'm a fat bastard! I'm showing up as Windows 2003, but I'm on Windows XP 64-bit.
- JshWright 17y ago
  Yeah... I'm the fattest person in New York so far...
SapphireSun 17y 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.
- kbrower 17y ago
  Good idea, I will make it work with 5lb intervals
nbrochu 17y 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. 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. Other than that, I liked the results page and all the statistics it provided!
glymor 17y ago
It's true, Chrome is the lightest browser: http://obesitynearme.com/browser/ http://obesitynearme.com/browser/ And Vista is indeed significantly heavier: http://obesitynearme.com/os/ http://obesitynearme.com/os/ Also people from reddit are apparently fat: http://obesitynearme.com/referrer/ http://obesitynearme.com/referrer/ (All results correct at time of publication)
brown9-2 17y ago
These datapoints are a little scary: - Your BMI is 26, which means you are Overweight - Your BMI is lower than 42% of people who submitted this survey - Your BMI is lower than 63% of 27 year olds - Your BMI is lower than 39% of people from news.ycombinator.com Sounds as if the people sampled skew young and overweight. 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). edit: for anyone else interested in the shortcomings of BMI, wikipedia seems to have a good summary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index#Limitations_and_shortcomings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index#Limitations_and...
- dustingetz 17y ago
  its the best easy measurement. if you just want to track your own weight loss (and not compare to others), you can take waist measurements once you reach the point of gaining weight while still losing fat. you can measure body fat % with calipers, but you need to go to a doctor with experience to get a reading with reasonable margin of error. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caliper#Use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caliper#Use
- glymor 17y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waist-hip_ratio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waist-hip_ratio is more useful for most of the obesity risk factors.
jules 17y ago
> Your BMI is lower than 97% of people who submitted this survey And I'm much bigger than a few years ago...
SMrF 17y ago
If this is to raise awareness, you might want to reword the stats. I found them slightly hard to parse. "Your BMI is lower than 37% of people who submitted this survey." This might be better written as, "You are fatter than 60% of people who submitted this survey." Ouch. 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.
heyitsnick 17y 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.
- ErrantX 17y ago
  My small UK town seemed to work - try a nearby city. The app seems to use United Kingdom btw, you may have morel luck trying that.
thrdOriginal 17y 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.
glymor 17y ago
On an individual basis waist-hip ratio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waist-hip_ratio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waist-hip_ratio is a better metric. BMI is a tool for populations as a whole.
arthurk 17y ago
"Division by zero" error at http://obesitynearme.com/country/DE/ http://obesitynearme.com/country/DE/
sounddust 17y 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. 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. 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).
rezrovs 17y 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.
rezrovs 17y ago
And what use is the graph 'Obesity by Operating System'?
- pgbovine 17y ago
  ... at the risk of getting downvoted for low-brow digg-like links: http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/09/are-linux-programmers-getting-too-fat/ http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/09/are-linux-programmers-getti...

18 points by kbrower 17y 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.

a-priori 17y ago

Your BMI is lower than 100% of people who submitted this survey Is this your way of saying I'm a wimpy nerd? :)

ErrantX 17y ago

Another Kohana user I see :D I caused an error :( http://obesitynearme.com/city/Sleaford/H7/GB/ http://obesitynearme.com/city/Sleaford/H7/GB/

kbrower 17y ago
Yeah, Kohana is great! Thanks for catching that error. It has been fixed.

ottbot 17y ago

Do you plan on only having data for the US? If not, have you considered adding the ability to enter data in metric?

kbrower 17y ago
I have just considered it, and I will add it.
- garyrichardson 17y ago
  Looks like there are a few other Canadians trying this out. I would definitely pass it on to friends if it showed a provincial break down as well.

r00k 17y ago

Getting the captcha wrong clears all the fields. That's pretty cruel, usability-wise.

kbrower 17y ago
I will fix this

mrduncan 17y 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.

maxdemarzi 17y ago

"Your BMI is lower than 0% of people from IL" I'm a fat bastard! I'm showing up as Windows 2003, but I'm on Windows XP 64-bit.

JshWright 17y ago
Yeah... I'm the fattest person in New York so far...

SapphireSun 17y 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.

kbrower 17y ago
Good idea, I will make it work with 5lb intervals

nbrochu 17y 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. 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. Other than that, I liked the results page and all the statistics it provided!

glymor 17y ago

It's true, Chrome is the lightest browser: http://obesitynearme.com/browser/ http://obesitynearme.com/browser/ And Vista is indeed significantly heavier: http://obesitynearme.com/os/ http://obesitynearme.com/os/ Also people from reddit are apparently fat: http://obesitynearme.com/referrer/ http://obesitynearme.com/referrer/ (All results correct at time of publication)

brown9-2 17y ago

These datapoints are a little scary: - Your BMI is 26, which means you are Overweight - Your BMI is lower than 42% of people who submitted this survey - Your BMI is lower than 63% of 27 year olds - Your BMI is lower than 39% of people from news.ycombinator.com Sounds as if the people sampled skew young and overweight. 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). edit: for anyone else interested in the shortcomings of BMI, wikipedia seems to have a good summary: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index#Limitations_and_shortcomings http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index#Limitations_and...

dustingetz 17y ago
its the best easy measurement. if you just want to track your own weight loss (and not compare to others), you can take waist measurements once you reach the point of gaining weight while still losing fat. you can measure body fat % with calipers, but you need to go to a doctor with experience to get a reading with reasonable margin of error. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caliper#Use http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caliper#Use
glymor 17y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waist-hip_ratio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waist-hip_ratio is more useful for most of the obesity risk factors.

jules 17y ago

> Your BMI is lower than 97% of people who submitted this survey And I'm much bigger than a few years ago...

SMrF 17y ago

If this is to raise awareness, you might want to reword the stats. I found them slightly hard to parse. "Your BMI is lower than 37% of people who submitted this survey." This might be better written as, "You are fatter than 60% of people who submitted this survey." Ouch. 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.

heyitsnick 17y 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.

ErrantX 17y ago
My small UK town seemed to work - try a nearby city. The app seems to use United Kingdom btw, you may have morel luck trying that.

thrdOriginal 17y 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.

glymor 17y ago

On an individual basis waist-hip ratio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waist-hip_ratio http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waist-hip_ratio is a better metric. BMI is a tool for populations as a whole.

arthurk 17y ago

"Division by zero" error at http://obesitynearme.com/country/DE/ http://obesitynearme.com/country/DE/

sounddust 17y 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. 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. 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).

rezrovs 17y 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.

rezrovs 17y ago

And what use is the graph 'Obesity by Operating System'?

pgbovine 17y ago
... at the risk of getting downvoted for low-brow digg-like links: http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/09/are-linux-programmers-getting-too-fat/ http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/09/are-linux-programmers-getti...