Tweets for Today

[packbat]

• 07:09 @kirabug That's it! "Junk stats"! #

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Comments

[active-apathy.livejournal.com]

Ah, but the side-effect to that is that if you label a metric as a "junk stat" for being improperly used in isolation or out of context, then it's likely that the same people who'd otherwise make impaired decisions on incomplete information will think that those data so labelled are universally useless.

(Which isn't to make anything remotely resembling a case for BMI, but would a metric that balanced weight and height against other factors like sex, age, body composition (further distinguishing between metabolic fat and non-), altitude, climate, season, any pre-existing conditions (physical, psychological or otherwise), and even mood be any less useless as a decision making tool? Discuss.)

[packbat.livejournal.com]

That is a hazard - it's not a label that should be applied willy-nilly. On the other hand, if you leave the junk stat unlabeled, people will be deceived by the frequent exceptions.

(As for the aside: the trouble with BMI is that I'm not sure there's anything left once you take into account the other factors. I think it's a good rule of thumb for scaling human beings - increase height by ten percent, increase weight by twenty-one percent - but that's about it.)