I noticed today that the dashboard data entry button now has an intriguing sigma sign on it. Tooltip says ‘Sigma for Summing’ because, well, maths notation.
The intriguing bit for me is that it implies that non-sigma parentheticals are possible. Couldn’t find anything here in the forum or in the help docs, but maybe you know?
My best guess is that it represents the behind-the-scenes kyoom value to indicate that the graph plots the cumulative total of daily aggregated values, regardless of aggregation method.
And indeed I’ve just found one single non-autodata (but should be marked as such!) goal in my dashboard that lacks a parenthetical, and it’s a loser goal (not in a pejorative sense!) that plots the current value, not a cumulative one.
So I guess I’ve answered my own question and this musing is just for posterity and future searchers.
Aha, that explains why I couldn’t find it in the changelog! Searched for sigma instead of, well you know, sigma.
Also, it prompted me to update the data source on 7 goals that should have been marked API.
Not surprised that it’s been live for quite some time, since I rarely enter data using the website (or indeed the apps). Everything’s either autodata or I habitually use a script.
I’ve just switched some do-less goals back to ‘manual’ data sources because setting them to API seems to inhibit the creation of PPRs, regardless of what the help text on the Settings tab says!
Just an anecdote from a frequent user: I found the appearance of the symbol confusing and just a taaaad alarming! I was able to draw up something deep in my brain that said, “I think that’s the symbol for… summing?” So I guess I assumed that it was indicating that my data point would be added to the total… But I found it very unclear, and still, every time I see it, it gives me pause, wondering what clicking the “add progress” button will do!
TL;DR: It’s a little mental paper cut every time I run into it and I have to think about what it means. Maybe it’s just me.
It looks like we totally are. I think the following is true but very misleading if we’re not actually honoring the checkbox!
You probably want [PPRs] on if you are manually adding data for this goal. You probably want this off if you have some automatic source that reports data to this goal for you.
(It continues to amaze me how much better everything would be if we’d internalized the Anti-Magic Principle sooner.)
Double-doh. You did assume correctly and it sounds like this subtle tooltip if you hover exactly over the tiny capital sigma would not help much, even if it elaborated:
I personally like the sigmas and feel like it fits our aesthetic but this has me curious: if we’d gone with something subtler, like auto-summing graphs have a different border color or something, would that be better or worse from your perspective? The other extreme would be to spell it out in plain English but I think we need less of that to keep the UI from feeling so overwhelming.
Exactly so. Having set all of my script-driven goals to API, I then happened to miss a day’s entry and the PPR wasn’t created. The warning is strongly worded but implies that it will happen despite my alleged wrongheadedness in enabling PPRs on an API goal.
It’s an odd case, in that although the data is invariably added by use of a script (and hence via the API) it’s still actually manual entry rather than autodata. It’s just that there’s a calculation in the background that means it’s never manual in an via-the-web or a via-the-official-app kind of way.
Concrete examples of such goals:
carbs, which is a do less goal to limit the amount of sugary/starchy carbohydrate I consume. The script remembers how many carbs there are in a serving of whatever foodstuff, so I can just tell the script that I had a sandwich or 6 oatcakes and it does the rest, also allowing me to easily add new entries to the foodstuff database.
read, which tracks the number of pages I’ve read in various books. The script does the hard work of remembering where I read to last time so that I can just say that I’ve reached page 47 of Whatever Next?, and it does the rest. It also records my progress in a database of sorts so that it can produce the datasets behind what once was a useful record of my reading — and now reveals how much of my reading has shifted away from books toward untracked/untrackable online materials. (Though I hardly ever tracked my reading of fiction in English so the record is gappy anyway.)
I think the following is true but very misleading if we’re not actually honoring the checkbox!