Ten years of running every day, visualized
55 points by mtlynch
55 points by mtlynch
Not about computing
Are you saying that the domain of running is not about computing, or are you saying that collecting ten years of data, and then publishing it by writing code in order to put it on a website with 19 different statistical aggregations and 13 different graphical visualizations is not about computing?
Yeah, collecting ten years of data and putting it on a website is not about computing. If it was data about computing, or included information on how these statistical aggregations were done, or showed the code to make these graphical visualizations, then it would be about computing. Otherwise it isn’t any closer to being on topic than the gorgeous visualizations and analyses of Which is the best performing Marvel Movie.
I would assume it’s the first. The article may or may not have technical topics, I’ve only skimmed it so far. But the primary domain is definitely not about computing.
I don’t mind either way but I’m used to articles even in the e.g. software engineering domain, but not technical but rather sociological, get removed, so I kinda get the point of the comment above yours.
True. And I know this is somewhat contentious, but it’s difficult (for me) to read the lobsters about page on tagging without walking away with the belief that tags define what is on topic.
The tagging system works this way for three reasons: It keeps the site on-topic by only allowing a predefined list of tags. These tags represent what most of the users of the site want to read, so content that does not fit into any of those categories should not be submitted. It also keeps stories organized and more easily searchable.
Emphasis mine.
Since this is tagged as visualization, and the page is indeed a collection of interesting data visualizations, I believe it to be on topic.
[edit]
It’s reasonable to disagree on what visualization actually entails. Maybe it means writing about the process of and creation of visualizations, and visualizations on their own don’t qualify as the intent of this tag. I personally find these data visualizations interesting, and give me ideas for how to implement similar visualizations from a technical perspective. Mission accomplished, I’d say. It got me thinking about computing.
Looking over past couple of pages of articles tagged visualization, I’d say it generally entails one: visualizing aspects of computing, visualization libraries, how to make visualizations, or visualizations about noncomputing things but with sufficient description of the programmatic process of making the visualizations for the essay to be “about computing”, even if the visualizations themselves are not. I don’t think a visualization without any more information is on topic, even if it’s a really really good one.
I don’t think a visualization without any more information is on topic, even if it’s a really really good one.
I agree. I think this one is quite borderline. That much is obvious by how many others agree with you here.
That I’m aware of the data processing and computing that went into generating the visualizations made me appreciate them, and I don’t find the post out of place here. Though I certainly understand why others don’t agree with my point of view.
There’s obviously some ambiguity in what the tag visualization means. We know that visualization of data often requires processing and visualization generation techniques that involve computing. And it’s understandable for that implicit computing to not be enough for crustacean preferences.
I mean, a photo can be about visualisation, and make you think about computing. Some article from financial papers can have graphs. Yahoo stocks pages have many visualisations.
I don’t think most of them are on computing.
There are articles submitted with actual computing, but they get feve taken down because they’re product announcements or similar.
I’m not trying to say anything about the site being on topic or not, just that lobsters rules seem not to want this article.
In short, I don’t think “Not about computing” is the criterion to be on the lookout for. “Doesn’t match its tag(s)” seems more appropriate.
But the community’s votes will ultimately judge whether it’s a good fit for lobsters. If enough people flag and hide it, then the people will have spoken, and it’ll disappear from the home page.
Never got too sick to run or an injury? I am probably taking this too literally, but that’s directly where my brain goes and I wish that was addressed. I also had a recent running injury that had me in a boot and crutches for a couple weeks.
Anyway, interesting choices for visualization to me. . Like the circular one to represent when they ran. I don’t use strava or anything right now, so I’m not sure how common those visualization choices are - because I imagine you can get reasonable visualizations from these apps. It’s fun to export that data and play with it yourself
Never got too sick to run or an injury? I am probably taking this too literally, but that’s directly where my brain goes and I wish that was addressed.
Yeah, agreed. They said they ran at least 1 mile per day to count, so I could imagine doing a slow 1mi on a treadmill unless you’re deathly ill, but yeah, my high school cross country coach used to tell us that runners got injured more than any other athlete, so I’m surprised there’s no ankle/foot/knee injury in 10 years that would have taken the author out of commission for at least a few days.
I’ve run through stress fractures, heart procedures, flus and other physical ailments.
I assume they do one mile on the treadmill to keep the streak alive when they’re injured/sick
keep the streak alive when they’re injured/sick
I strongly dislike streak mechanics because they drive behavior like this. I have seen people’s morale crushed because of missing a day after a long streak, and seen obsessive people demand administrative action to restore their streaks. ANYWAY, I will put that aside because streakers gotta streak, and I guess they like it that way.
i call the one-milers “streak savers”, those have unfortunately become more frequent lately
He seems definitely aware about it… but still wants to keep the streak alive.
Love the style and thoughtful to the data shown, broke up by different types of runs.
Amazing consistency.
been lucky to run on all seven continents, including antarctica!
Doesn’t look like they made it to Australia, or Oceania. So six continents?
Interesting. Does anybody know what equipment he used to track all of these?
Author has more info on their HN submission:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44522683
Raw data from Strava, which can interface with a number of devices I believe.
Strava allows bulk exports, and the author is a Strava user.
[edit]
I cracked my Strava export open. Older activities were recorded as GPX files. Newer ones are gzipped FIT files, which can contain a lot more health data than GPX files. Based on my timeline that overlaps with the author’s, the bulk of their early runs would have been GPX, eventually switching over to FIT (I didn’t check the date where the switch happened).