death to auto-widening yellow brick roads

[Essentiae]

I said “QM” again… I meant QS that time too.

On Friday, August 9, 2013 9:13:18 PM UTC-4, Essentiae wrote:

Yup, I meant QS. (“QM” is stuck in my mind from quantitative methods.)

I don’t envy your task of trying to get the mechanics just right for this
kind of goal. (Tough enough so that it doesn’t just allow… everything…
but also not so tough that there’s a pms-tax, hehe.) If anyone’ll figure
out how to do it fairly, though, it’s you guys.

This is partly a user issue, too. I mean, if we want to track it only
semi-harshly, we can always have it set up using the “don’t gain, maybe
lose” method by having a nearly imperceptible road rate with a safety
buffer just a little larger than the size of the largest safety buffer
we’ll need. I mean, if this type of goal is different and we need to think
about it differently… then… maybe ~we~ ought to think about it
differently. Plan to lose/gain, Beemind the related behaviours tightly
(but reasonably), and if we bust through our safety zones at thatpoint… well that’s on us. We get the QM value, we keep from going in the
wrong direction or losing hard won gains, and you guys need less Advil. In
a way, we may be kind of contradicting ourselves anyway: This kind of goal
is different and we need to think of it differently… but I want to think
of it the same so rig the graphs up so that I can do that and still not
lose too badly.

On the other, other hand, just spit-ballin’ a little more: You know how
there’s a countdown for dropping back down from a higher pledge? Have a
user-defined period in the settings (for this type of goal only) and a
“this is an anomalous datapoint” button. Clicking it begins a countdown
clock. You can’t derail while on the countdown clock, but you see that
you’re over and need to be back down below the line before it runs out in
3/5/7/10/14/whatever days. If it’s a legit anomaly, you will be and all
will be well. If it’s not, it’s just a delayed derailment. (I think that,
in that case, quitting during your “time off” period should trigger the
delayed derailment, and the akrasia horizon should be pushed to [7 +
countdown time left] days (to prevent weaselling like archiving before
your countdown time runs out or changing the road rate to weasel). Changing
the number of days on the safety clock should also be subject to the
akrasia horizon (maybe after the first month and the user is more familiar
with individual patterns). Otherwise, the road works just like all other
goals and is double the size of the road rate (or user-defined in custom…
with changes subject to the akrasia horizon).

On Thursday, August 8, 2013 11:58:53 PM UTC-4, Daniel Reeves wrote:

Quick clarification: You probably mean “QS” as in Quantified Self.
Were you thinking QM as in quantified-mind.com ?

And, yes, a common soap box of mine is that Beeminder should be
foremost a quantified self tool. So any hackery involving suppression
of data points or entering values that don’t correspond to an actual
thing being measured should be a non-starter. Actually I hugely
appreciate hearing about cases (like Essy not recording anomalously
high weights) where you’re tempted to deviate from the QS ideal
because (as with the case of auto-widening or smoothing or minding the
moving average, or whatever the answer to this problem is going to
be!) it tells us how we need to fix Beeminder to get rid of that
temptation.

On Thu, Aug 8, 2013 at 6:21 AM, Essentiae esse...@gmail.com wrote:

Thin vs. wide roads
“Remember that if you’re truly akratic then nothing really matters but
the
top edge of your yellow brick road. (If you’re not truly akratic then
just
stay comfortably below the road and ignore all this!) So I’m not buying
the
concern about a razor-thin road.”

I think it’s right that it’s the top of the road that matters. That
said,
the yellow brick road provides valuable visual feedback on how you’re
doing:
when you’re in risky territory (orange), when you’re sailing smoothly
(blue), and when you’re rockin’ it (green). Having only green and red
points
loses that valuable visual data, as well as the safety one has earned
when
getting onto a green point. Beeminder doesn’t just help akratics stop
doing
dumb $#!~ today, it also sort of teaches akratics the value of thinking
and
working ahead. I’ve certainly noticed a tendency to start thinking
things
like “I should get X goal above my road by a few days cause event Y is
coming up and I don’t want to have to think about it during that time.”
I’ve
always ~thought~ that… but now I’m doing it with some goals cause I
have a
visual representation of my effort. That’s a fundamental shift. I think
people who are doing better than their roads have “earned”, in a way,
the
feeling of safety on the green/blue side. So road width matters, IMO. I
think custom road width for weight, if it’s not going to have
auto-widening,
allows that. (BUT fix it so we can’t change the road width on the fly;
there
should be a 7-day countdown for road width changes. Otherwise: “Argh,
I’m
over by .2lbs today… guess I’ll change my road width…”)

Saving yourself on a given day
“Imagine your road is sloping down and you’re below it at first but you
weigh in every day at the same weight, 100kg. You’re on a collision
course
with the road. After 9 days of 100kg each day, you find yourself on the
wrong side of the road. It’s an emergency day and you need to lose .5kg
to
get back on.”

Then you’ve already lost.

If you have to try to lose weight in a day (when you’re going to be
(and
OUGHT to be) putting food and water into your body from the moment you
get
up), I think you’re in a bad place. I’m really leery of the idea of
trying
to recover on any single given day. But that may be because of how I
use my
weight goal. I use it to force me to tighten the behavour goals that
result
in weight loss/maintenance (Daniel mentioned a few ideas later on in
his
post) rather than as a “today” thing. If my weight’s not coming down, I
need
to tweak some of my behavour goals, on penalty of derailing later. (For
this
reason, I would love my weight goal to be set up with a 30-day akrasia
horizon, instead of a 7-day akrasia horizon.)

I think having a weight loss goal without having behavioural goals is
symptomatic of the akratic problem when connected to weight loss.
Weight
goals are fundamentally different from goals like getting more work
done or
limiting TV hours, and the akratic problem for that type of goal is
different from the akratic problem for the “omgz just do a little of
this
today you procrastinator” type goals.

Real-time vs average
So… sometimes I talk of the world of the “ideal” about things that
don’t
actually matter ~a ton~ to me. This is one of those cases. I really
don’t
care that much whether the road is measuring individual datapoints or
the
average, and I think the fact that it would mean making what might be
some
pretty significant changes to Beeminder behind-the-scenes probably
makes it
not worth it. The reason I would support it (in lieu of the
auto-widening
roads) is for the unreasonable derailment cases (though, auto-widening
roads
still didn’t fix many of the long-term, regular, legit derail cases).

I believe very strongly that genuine “am not losing weight so am over
today”
datapoints = you’ve already lost… pay the hell up. Weight goals are
think-ahead goals and we akratics need to learn that. Losing water by
running around or veggy fasting for a day is not a healthy solution,
IMO.
You’ve already lost… pay up, go have a glass of water, a normal
breakfast,
and make healthier choices this week. So, whether it’s impossible to
move
the moving average down after that or not means nothing to me. What
worries
me, are those days that are not representative of the true trend. If
you are
genuinely on the right track, you shouldn’t be penalized for something
like
water retention, pms retention, or other things best left to your
imagination. Auto-widening roads or using an average doesn’t ~really~
help
that, cause in the water-retention or pms cases, we’re probably looking
at
several “above goal” days even if you’re actually doing well and even
if
you’re losing fat during that time.

I don’t really care how the goal is set up as long as it a) forces me
to
plan my behaviour ~enough~ to meet my targets, b) doesn’t leave me
thinking
about hitting the sauna to weigh in lower, c) doesn’t punish me for
non-representative changes.

For me, a longer akrasia horizon for weight goals + some different way
of
counting when a derail happens (whatever it is) that forgives spikes
that
aren’t representative is enough to do that… whatever those details are.

This is what I’ve done from time to time (and might do again… I’m sorry
Daniel, you’re going to hate this). I would enter my datapoints, but
fail to
report my above the road points. If they were genuinely above the road
b/c I
was actually failing, I would derail by not entering for several days
and
running out of time. If they weren’t, I would pop back down before that
happened and the trend would continue just fine. This was fair, to me,
b/c
it meant I wouldn’t be unfairly penalized… as long as the road was
steep
enough to matter or the derail point was ~before~ the akrasia horizon.
Otherwise it’s too easy to change the road rate and never derail…

The problem with that is that I lose the QM value. BUT, what if weight
loss
goals were set with different derail conditions. This is off the top of
my
head, so there might be stupid things I’m not thinking of hidden here:

1. Custom road width. (I want to earn the blue points, dammit! hehe.
   But
   more importantly, I also think visual representation if someone is
   losing
   ~too much~ weight is important. losing over 2-3lbs/week has gallbladder
   implications, so someone who sets their road to 2lbs with 1 safe day
   and who
   has a trend that is clearly steeper has a visual cue that they should
   eat a
   little more to stay on the healthy side of their efforts. I realize
   these
   are the minority cases, and not my own case, but it is one of the ways
   Beeminder can help people who are a little overzealous about it to keep
   from
   hurting themselves)

2. Users (more typical than those mentioned in 1) setting longer safe
   day
   buffers (I like 14 because some of the legit spikes can be 10-days long
   but
   can catch right back up afterwards; men might prefer something like 5-7
   days, all depending on personal patterns/medical considerations). See
   attached as an example of what was a legit spike.

3. A farther akrasia horizon for this goal (I like 30 days, but it
   could be
   a customizable value, maybe?… with changing that value subject to the
   ~currently~ set akrasia horizon value so that I can’t just weasel),

4. (sorry) changing it so that it allows me to enter my above the line
   points for QM purposes, but derails as though I hadn’t. Make it so that
   some
   recent point matters, but not necessarily the most recent point. Maybe
   the
   lowest day in the “max safe days” range. I.e., if I have a 10-day max
   safe
   day range, then the lowest day in the last 10 days is what counts for
   derailing. BUT, it doesn’t count as though it’s today’s point, it
   counts as
   though I haven’t entered a point since. That way, if there fails to be
   positive change in [max safe day range] number of days, I lose. (But
   count
   the Hard caps by using today’s point and it’s distance from the point I
   need
   to be back to when I need to be back on the road.)

5. Allow only 1 weight goal per user so that people don’t start using
   weight
   goals in order to create “debts” for other kinds of goals. (“I’ll just
   create a weight-type goal for my reading because then I can choose to
   catch
   up if I don’t keep on track” ← FAIL!)

This could allow users who know their legit fluctuation details to plan
for
them with safety, but not to use their safety net too loosely. And,
although
I get your point about akratics and the upper line or the road, weight
goals
are just different. They can’t be treated like other goals b/c they’re
just
not like other goals. Part of heading in the right direction is
realizing
that and adapting to it, I think. AND if you want to treat it like
other
goals then create it like another goal: custom goal for the no eating +
sauna win.

Sorry for yet another way-too-long post!

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[Rosie_G]

I realise I am bumping an old thread, sorry about that

I was sent a link to this thread as I was having a “discussion” with one of
the beeminder staff about what I perceived as an unfair weight derailment.

In almost all of my recent derailments I have derailed due to a single
anomalous reading, the weight reading for the next day would have put me
back on the original yellow road. Some points (somewhat condensed from my
original lengthy emails)

- If you are consistently tracking above, but parallel to the centre line
you are still making good progress, however as you are above centrepoint a
single anomalous high reading will derail you.
*
*
- If you are approaching the upper limit of the road then you are more
motivated to do more, if at that point you get an anomolus reading that
derails you, your yellow road is reset and you suddenly have loads more
leeway = less motivation for positive behaviours .
*
*

• • It would be far better to track the purple line, than individual
    datapoints. Individual datapoints encourages unhealthy behaviour (as
    illustrated by a poster above)*

Some things that have jumped out at me in this thread, and my comments:

*At 9:40 this morning I weighed 71.85 kg (158.4 lb). That was a pound
or so above my weight road, bmndr.com/d/mass .
So I jumped around the house and did squats and burpees and things
until I had sweated out about 2 soda cans’ worth of sweat.
*
*
*
This is not healthy or sustainable. It is simply gaming the system to alter
one datapoint. As soon as you rehydrate the weight is back on. This sort of
behaviour should not be encouraged.
*
*
The idea that if we’re over the line one day we can try to claw our ways
back down that day to correct it is kind of silly (and seems an unhealthy
way to look at weight loss). [1] If I’ve reached the point that I’m over
the line, I may have already lost (unless it was a weird, random upward
fluctuation). Today’s datapoint should matter less in weight loss goals
than the trend. Today should matter only in so far as it’s a piece of that
trend. I would greatly prefer having a road that is calibrated to derail
according to an average. I think that’s way more stable a measurement for
weight loss datapoints (because random fluctuations only effect it slightly
since the surrounding points matter too) and it is, I believe, a healthier
way to think of weight loss. Today matters, because it could push my
average over, but it’s not the focus.

This ^

• Remember that if you’re truly akratic then
  nothing really matters but the top edge of your yellow brick road. (If
  you’re not truly akratic then just stay comfortably below the road and
  ignore all this!)*

Which is why, as a truly akratic person who tends to be most motivated
between the centreline and the top edge, it really sucks when an anomalous
data point derails and resets your road.

*If you have to try to lose weight in a day (when you’re going to be (and
OUGHT to be) putting food and water into your body from the moment you get
up), I think you’re in a bad place. I’m really leery of the idea of trying
to recover on any single given day. *
*
*
This^

*I’d either like to beemind the purple line itself, or have a guarantee
that I won’t derail if the purple line is in the right lane.

I derailed a weight goal once due to water retention happening 2 days
in a row, even though my purple line was solidly in the right lane. I
found it so frustrating that I just stopped beeminding my weight.
*

This^

• Have a user-defined period in the settings (for this type of goal only)
  and a “this is an anomalous datapoint” button. Clicking it begins a
  countdown clock. You can’t derail while on the countdown clock, but you see
  that you’re over and need to be back down below the line before it runs out
  in 3/5/7/10/14/whatever days. If it’s a legit anomaly, you will be and all
  will be well. If it’s not, it’s just a delayed derailment.*

This is also a really great idea. You trust us to a certain extent not to
cheat, why not trust us to point out anomalous readings?

Sorry for this massive post; on the bright side I can now spell,
“anomalous”

[dreev]

Rosie, thanks so much for re-opening this discussion, and for the
cogent comments! I’m still mulling all these ideas, especially the
proposal to beemind the moving average.

I know it looks like gaming the system when you have an emergency
weight loss day and scramble to weigh in on the yellow brick road by
running around the block and doing squats and whatnot, or eating very
little all day to make sure you can weigh in lower in the evening. But
it is forcing workouts and calorie restriction to happen every so
often. So I claim that it is helping with the long-term goal as well
as the short-term goal. It’s certainly possible to do things that help
purely with the short-term goal. I personally haven’t felt any
temptation to do those things. I agree that you should try to keep
enough safety buffer that you don’t need to do anything crazy.

Fundamentally, you should only beemind things (or seriously beemind
things, where you let the pledge climb, and are often skating the edge
– where Beeminder is really pushing you) that are fully under your
control. Personally I view weight as fully under my control because
I’m perfectly willing to do things like just stop eating at a moment’s
notice to satisfy Beeminder. If you’re not into that kind of craziness
then I think it’s best to beemind other things like servings of junk
food [1] or workouts. And also beemind weight but super
conservatively. Like just keep the yellow brick road flat and ratchet
it down occasionally. That way you can see the results of your hard
work without stressing over something you don’t have full control
over.

PS: The reason I don’t like most of the proposals, like beeminding the
moving average or having an “anomalous datapoint” button is what we
now call Jill’s Rule, or Beeminder’s No Free Lunch Theorem:
Catch-up Unmustered; or, Easier is Harder | Beeminder Blog – anything that makes it easier to stay on
the road in the short term makes the overall goal harder.

[1] I also do this – sugar – d – beeminder – and love it, and it makes
beeminding my weight very easy – I very rarely have to do anything
crazy. I found it too high friction to have to pull out my phone each
time I ate something so I got an abacus bracelet –
http://knittingabacus.com/ – to keep track throughout the day.

On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 6:11 AM, Rosie G rosie.gawthrop@gmail.com wrote:

I realise I am bumping an old thread, sorry about that

I was sent a link to this thread as I was having a “discussion” with one of
the beeminder staff about what I perceived as an unfair weight derailment.

In almost all of my recent derailments I have derailed due to a single
anomalous reading, the weight reading for the next day would have put me
back on the original yellow road. Some points (somewhat condensed from my
original lengthy emails)

• If you are consistently tracking above, but parallel to the centre line
  you are still making good progress, however as you are above centrepoint a
  single anomalous high reading will derail you.

• If you are approaching the upper limit of the road then you are more
  motivated to do more, if at that point you get an anomolus reading that
  derails you, your yellow road is reset and you suddenly have loads more
  leeway = less motivation for positive behaviours .

• It would be far better to track the purple line, than individual
  datapoints. Individual datapoints encourages unhealthy behaviour (as
  illustrated by a poster above)

Some things that have jumped out at me in this thread, and my comments:

At 9:40 this morning I weighed 71.85 kg (158.4 lb). That was a pound
or so above my weight road, mass – d – beeminder .
So I jumped around the house and did squats and burpees and things
until I had sweated out about 2 soda cans’ worth of sweat.

This is not healthy or sustainable. It is simply gaming the system to alter
one datapoint. As soon as you rehydrate the weight is back on. This sort of
behaviour should not be encouraged.

The idea that if we’re over the line one day we can try to claw our ways
back down that day to correct it is kind of silly (and seems an unhealthy
way to look at weight loss). [1] If I’ve reached the point that I’m over
the line, I may have already lost (unless it was a weird, random upward
fluctuation). Today’s datapoint should matter less in weight loss goals than
the trend. Today should matter only in so far as it’s a piece of that trend.
I would greatly prefer having a road that is calibrated to derail according
to an average. I think that’s way more stable a measurement for weight loss
datapoints (because random fluctuations only effect it slightly since the
surrounding points matter too) and it is, I believe, a healthier way to
think of weight loss. Today matters, because it could push my average over,
but it’s not the focus.

This ^

Remember that if you’re truly akratic then
nothing really matters but the top edge of your yellow brick road. (If
you’re not truly akratic then just stay comfortably below the road and
ignore all this!)

Which is why, as a truly akratic person who tends to be most motivated
between the centreline and the top edge, it really sucks when an anomalous
data point derails and resets your road.

If you have to try to lose weight in a day (when you’re going to be (and
OUGHT to be) putting food and water into your body from the moment you get
up), I think you’re in a bad place. I’m really leery of the idea of trying
to recover on any single given day.

This^

I’d either like to beemind the purple line itself, or have a guarantee
that I won’t derail if the purple line is in the right lane.

I derailed a weight goal once due to water retention happening 2 days
in a row, even though my purple line was solidly in the right lane. I
found it so frustrating that I just stopped beeminding my weight.

This^

Have a user-defined period in the settings (for this type of goal only) and
a “this is an anomalous datapoint” button. Clicking it begins a countdown
clock. You can’t derail while on the countdown clock, but you see that
you’re over and need to be back down below the line before it runs out in
3/5/7/10/14/whatever days. If it’s a legit anomaly, you will be and all will
be well. If it’s not, it’s just a delayed derailment.

This is also a really great idea. You trust us to a certain extent not to
cheat, why not trust us to point out anomalous readings?

Sorry for this massive post; on the bright side I can now spell, “anomalous”

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[Philip_Hellyer]

I had an anomalous up-day recently and was saved by the magical road width
(which I thought we’d turned off!). So I wondered just how variable my
first-weigh-ins are — turns out that it’s not uncommon for me to have jumps
in excess of 2 pounds (c. 1% of body mass). My anomalous weigh-ins only
seem to last a day, so it’ll be up a kilo one morning, then back to normal
over the next 2-3 days.

My current belief is that we can dispense with the current implementation
of magical widening. But we still need to handle the variability of data,
including random up-days.

1. Road width must be tied to the variability of the data, just as it is
   today.

Without this, my weight road would become a thin “bright line” that I need
to gauge for myself how much distance to stay below. One of the jobs of
Beeminder is to help me understand and manage safety buffer.

2. Restrict magical widening to a one-day grace period, but ignore the
   starting lane.

This would eliminate a lot of my derailments. But only those where my true
trend is downward, not the ones that were legitimate, sustained increases.
This is short-term enough that it doesn’t create the “bingeing when blue”
reward that a semi-permanent widening can. So I don’t think that it’s a
material violation of Jill’s Rule. And it would simplify communication of
the feature if we didn’t have to bring “which lane” into the conversation.

I beemind my weight conservatively, and only pledge an unchanging $5 on it.
This reduces my knee-jerk reaction to do “whatever it takes” to get back on
the road, and just accept the (no mercy!) derailment. To support the weight
loss goal, I also beemind stretching, going to the gym, and have fitbit &
runkeeper goals. I used to have an eat-better goal; now I try to notice
when my daily weigh-in is above the purple line and be more vigilant about
what goes in my mouth that day.

Beeminding the moving average is a seductive concept, but moving averages
aren’t magic. All they do is compare my weight today to my weight of N days
ago. One sign that we’ve cracked how weight graphs should work will be that
people (including me!) stop wanting to beemind the moving average.

Philip

P.S. Data points! Below is my day-to-day variability over the last 18
months, with reasonably consistent weigh-in conditions. The largest
variation from one morning to the next has been 1.5 kg. At least once each
month it’s more than 1 kg. One day in four it’s more than a pound. The
distribution’s median & mode are both 0.3 kg, average is 0.41 kg, with a
standard deviation of 0.32 kg.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-_I6J6yNYnj8/Uno0weR_ipI/AAAAAAAAAAM/nORBVeEIc18/s1600/Withings+Variability.png

Delta

Count

%

Days Per Month

% with higher delta

Days Per Month

Days Per Year

0.0

48

10.2%

3

89.8%

27

328

0.1

56

11.9%

4

77.9%

23

284

0.2

63

13.4%

4

64.5%

19

235

0.3

74

15.7%

5

48.7%

15

178

0.4

41

8.7%

3

40.0%

12

146

0.5

61

13.0%

4

27.0%

8

99

0.6

29

6.2%

2

20.9%

6

76

0.7

27

5.7%

2

15.1%

5

55

0.8

24

5.1%

2

10.0%

3

37

0.9

10

2.1%

1

7.9%

2

29

1.0

20

4.3%

1

3.6%

1

13

1.1

2

0.4%

0

3.2%

1

12

1.2

3

0.6%

0

2.6%

1

9

1.3

7

1.5%

0

1.1%

0

4

1.4

2

0.4%

0

0.6%

0

2

1.5

3

0.6%

0

0.0%

0

0

On Tuesday, November 5, 2013 11:02:37 PM UTC, Daniel Reeves wrote:

Rosie, thanks so much for re-opening this discussion, and for the
cogent comments! I’m still mulling all these ideas, especially the
proposal to beemind the moving average.

I know it looks like gaming the system when you have an emergency
weight loss day and scramble to weigh in on the yellow brick road by
running around the block and doing squats and whatnot, or eating very
little all day to make sure you can weigh in lower in the evening. But
it is forcing workouts and calorie restriction to happen every so
often. So I claim that it is helping with the long-term goal as well
as the short-term goal. It’s certainly possible to do things that help
purely with the short-term goal. I personally haven’t felt any
temptation to do those things. I agree that you should try to keep
enough safety buffer that you don’t need to do anything crazy.

Fundamentally, you should only beemind things (or seriously beemind
things, where you let the pledge climb, and are often skating the edge
– where Beeminder is really pushing you) that are fully under your
control. Personally I view weight as fully under my control because
I’m perfectly willing to do things like just stop eating at a moment’s
notice to satisfy Beeminder. If you’re not into that kind of craziness
then I think it’s best to beemind other things like servings of junk
food [1] or workouts. And also beemind weight but super
conservatively. Like just keep the yellow brick road flat and ratchet
it down occasionally. That way you can see the results of your hard
work without stressing over something you don’t have full control
over.

PS: The reason I don’t like most of the proposals, like beeminding the
moving average or having an “anomalous datapoint” button is what we
now call Jill’s Rule, or Beeminder’s No Free Lunch Theorem:
Catch-up Unmustered; or, Easier is Harder | Beeminder Blog – anything that makes it easier to stay on
the road in the short term makes the overall goal harder.

[1] I also do this – sugar – d – beeminder – and love it, and it makes
beeminding my weight very easy – I very rarely have to do anything
crazy. I found it too high friction to have to pull out my phone each
time I ate something so I got an abacus bracelet –
http://knittingabacus.com/ – to keep track throughout the day.

On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 6:11 AM, Rosie G <rosie.g...@gmail.com<javascript:>>
wrote:

I realise I am bumping an old thread, sorry about that

I was sent a link to this thread as I was having a “discussion” with one
of
the beeminder staff about what I perceived as an unfair weight
derailment.

In almost all of my recent derailments I have derailed due to a single
anomalous reading, the weight reading for the next day would have put me
back on the original yellow road. Some points (somewhat condensed from
my
original lengthy emails)

• If you are consistently tracking above, but parallel to the centre
  line
  you are still making good progress, however as you are above centrepoint
  a
  single anomalous high reading will derail you.

• If you are approaching the upper limit of the road then you are more
  motivated to do more, if at that point you get an anomolus reading that
  derails you, your yellow road is reset and you suddenly have loads more
  leeway = less motivation for positive behaviours .

• It would be far better to track the purple line, than individual
  datapoints. Individual datapoints encourages unhealthy behaviour (as
  illustrated by a poster above)

Some things that have jumped out at me in this thread, and my comments:

At 9:40 this morning I weighed 71.85 kg (158.4 lb). That was a pound
or so above my weight road, mass – d – beeminder .
So I jumped around the house and did squats and burpees and things
until I had sweated out about 2 soda cans’ worth of sweat.

This is not healthy or sustainable. It is simply gaming the system to
alter
one datapoint. As soon as you rehydrate the weight is back on. This sort
of
behaviour should not be encouraged.

The idea that if we’re over the line one day we can try to claw our ways
back down that day to correct it is kind of silly (and seems an
unhealthy
way to look at weight loss). [1] If I’ve reached the point that I’m
over
the line, I may have already lost (unless it was a weird, random upward
fluctuation). Today’s datapoint should matter less in weight loss goals
than
the trend. Today should matter only in so far as it’s a piece of that
trend.
I would greatly prefer having a road that is calibrated to derail
according
to an average. I think that’s way more stable a measurement for weight
loss
datapoints (because random fluctuations only effect it slightly since
the
surrounding points matter too) and it is, I believe, a healthier way to
think of weight loss. Today matters, because it could push my average
over,
but it’s not the focus.

This ^

Remember that if you’re truly akratic then
nothing really matters but the top edge of your yellow brick road. (If
you’re not truly akratic then just stay comfortably below the road and
ignore all this!)

Which is why, as a truly akratic person who tends to be most motivated
between the centreline and the top edge, it really sucks when an
anomalous
data point derails and resets your road.

If you have to try to lose weight in a day (when you’re going to be (and
OUGHT to be) putting food and water into your body from the moment you
get
up), I think you’re in a bad place. I’m really leery of the idea of
trying
to recover on any single given day.

This^

I’d either like to beemind the purple line itself, or have a guarantee
that I won’t derail if the purple line is in the right lane.

I derailed a weight goal once due to water retention happening 2 days
in a row, even though my purple line was solidly in the right lane. I
found it so frustrating that I just stopped beeminding my weight.

This^

Have a user-defined period in the settings (for this type of goal only)
and
a “this is an anomalous datapoint” button. Clicking it begins a
countdown
clock. You can’t derail while on the countdown clock, but you see that
you’re over and need to be back down below the line before it runs out
in
3/5/7/10/14/whatever days. If it’s a legit anomaly, you will be and all
will
be well. If it’s not, it’s just a delayed derailment.

This is also a really great idea. You trust us to a certain extent not
to
cheat, why not trust us to point out anomalous readings?

Sorry for this massive post; on the bright side I can now spell,
“anomalous”

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Goal tracking + Commitment contracts == http://beeminder.com

[Essentiae]

#2 wouldn’t solve the tax for women who track their weight (non
meaninglessly, i.e. without so much space between the road and the data
that it might as well be an excel file). It would only solve the problem
for men and for people without any health conditions (e.g. something like
IBS/IBD, I suppose) or perhaps medications that cause fluctuations for more
than a 24hr time span.

Current solutions: don’t track it, game the system yourself so that it’s
fair (using the fine print, “adjusted” data, and “codes in the comments”),
have a graph so pointless that it might as well be an excel or iwork file,
or have a $0 pledge.

I agree with Daniel that tracking behaviour is probably better, but it’s
also handy to be able have a second-order graph, in a sense, that
nudges/forces you towards making sure the behaviour you’re tracking is
making enough of a difference and doesn’t need to be
adjusted/supplemented/etc.

On Wednesday, November 6, 2013 8:29:24 AM UTC-5, pjh wrote:

I had an anomalous up-day recently and was saved by the magical road width
(which I thought we’d turned off!). So I wondered just how variable my
first-weigh-ins are — turns out that it’s not uncommon for me to have jumps
in excess of 2 pounds (c. 1% of body mass). My anomalous weigh-ins only
seem to last a day, so it’ll be up a kilo one morning, then back to normal
over the next 2-3 days.

My current belief is that we can dispense with the current implementation
of magical widening. But we still need to handle the variability of data,
including random up-days.

1. Road width must be tied to the variability of the data, just as it is
   today.

Without this, my weight road would become a thin “bright line” that I need
to gauge for myself how much distance to stay below. One of the jobs of
Beeminder is to help me understand and manage safety buffer.

2. Restrict magical widening to a one-day grace period, but ignore the
   starting lane.

This would eliminate a lot of my derailments. But only those where my true
trend is downward, not the ones that were legitimate, sustained increases.
This is short-term enough that it doesn’t create the “bingeing when blue”
reward that a semi-permanent widening can. So I don’t think that it’s a
material violation of Jill’s Rule. And it would simplify communication of
the feature if we didn’t have to bring “which lane” into the conversation.

I beemind my weight conservatively, and only pledge an unchanging $5 on
it. This reduces my knee-jerk reaction to do “whatever it takes” to get
back on the road, and just accept the (no mercy!) derailment. To support
the weight loss goal, I also beemind stretching, going to the gym, and have
fitbit & runkeeper goals. I used to have an eat-better goal; now I try to
notice when my daily weigh-in is above the purple line and be more vigilant
about what goes in my mouth that day.

Beeminding the moving average is a seductive concept, but moving averages
aren’t magic. All they do is compare my weight today to my weight of N days
ago. One sign that we’ve cracked how weight graphs should work will be that
people (including me!) stop wanting to beemind the moving average.

Philip

P.S. Data points! Below is my day-to-day variability over the last 18
months, with reasonably consistent weigh-in conditions. The largest
variation from one morning to the next has been 1.5 kg. At least once each
month it’s more than 1 kg. One day in four it’s more than a pound. The
distribution’s median & mode are both 0.3 kg, average is 0.41 kg, with a
standard deviation of 0.32 kg.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-_I6J6yNYnj8/Uno0weR_ipI/AAAAAAAAAAM/nORBVeEIc18/s1600/Withings+Variability.png

Delta

Count

%

Days Per Month

% with higher delta

Days Per Month

Days Per Year

0.0

48

10.2%

3

89.8%

27

328

0.1

56

11.9%

4

77.9%

23

284

0.2

63

13.4%

4

64.5%

19

235

0.3

74

15.7%

5

48.7%

15

178

0.4

41

8.7%

3

40.0%

12

146

0.5

61

13.0%

4

27.0%

8

99

0.6

29

6.2%

2

20.9%

6

76

0.7

27

5.7%

2

15.1%

5

55

0.8

24

5.1%

2

10.0%

3

37

0.9

10

2.1%

1

7.9%

2

29

1.0

20

4.3%

1

3.6%

1

13

1.1

2

0.4%

0

3.2%

1

12

1.2

3

0.6%

0

2.6%

1

9

1.3

7

1.5%

0

1.1%

0

4

1.4

2

0.4%

0

0.6%

0

2

1.5

3

0.6%

0

0.0%

0

0

On Tuesday, November 5, 2013 11:02:37 PM UTC, Daniel Reeves wrote:

Rosie, thanks so much for re-opening this discussion, and for the
cogent comments! I’m still mulling all these ideas, especially the
proposal to beemind the moving average.

I know it looks like gaming the system when you have an emergency
weight loss day and scramble to weigh in on the yellow brick road by
running around the block and doing squats and whatnot, or eating very
little all day to make sure you can weigh in lower in the evening. But
it is forcing workouts and calorie restriction to happen every so
often. So I claim that it is helping with the long-term goal as well
as the short-term goal. It’s certainly possible to do things that help
purely with the short-term goal. I personally haven’t felt any
temptation to do those things. I agree that you should try to keep
enough safety buffer that you don’t need to do anything crazy.

Fundamentally, you should only beemind things (or seriously beemind
things, where you let the pledge climb, and are often skating the edge
– where Beeminder is really pushing you) that are fully under your
control. Personally I view weight as fully under my control because
I’m perfectly willing to do things like just stop eating at a moment’s
notice to satisfy Beeminder. If you’re not into that kind of craziness
then I think it’s best to beemind other things like servings of junk
food [1] or workouts. And also beemind weight but super
conservatively. Like just keep the yellow brick road flat and ratchet
it down occasionally. That way you can see the results of your hard
work without stressing over something you don’t have full control
over.

PS: The reason I don’t like most of the proposals, like beeminding the
moving average or having an “anomalous datapoint” button is what we
now call Jill’s Rule, or Beeminder’s No Free Lunch Theorem:
Catch-up Unmustered; or, Easier is Harder | Beeminder Blog – anything that makes it easier to stay on
the road in the short term makes the overall goal harder.

[1] I also do this – sugar – d – beeminder – and love it, and it makes
beeminding my weight very easy – I very rarely have to do anything
crazy. I found it too high friction to have to pull out my phone each
time I ate something so I got an abacus bracelet –
http://knittingabacus.com/ – to keep track throughout the day.

On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 6:11 AM, Rosie G rosie.g...@gmail.com wrote:

I realise I am bumping an old thread, sorry about that

I was sent a link to this thread as I was having a “discussion” with
one of
the beeminder staff about what I perceived as an unfair weight
derailment.

In almost all of my recent derailments I have derailed due to a single
anomalous reading, the weight reading for the next day would have put
me
back on the original yellow road. Some points (somewhat condensed from
my
original lengthy emails)

• If you are consistently tracking above, but parallel to the centre
  line
  you are still making good progress, however as you are above
  centrepoint a
  single anomalous high reading will derail you.

• If you are approaching the upper limit of the road then you are more
  motivated to do more, if at that point you get an anomolus reading that
  derails you, your yellow road is reset and you suddenly have loads more
  leeway = less motivation for positive behaviours .

• It would be far better to track the purple line, than individual
  datapoints. Individual datapoints encourages unhealthy behaviour (as
  illustrated by a poster above)

Some things that have jumped out at me in this thread, and my comments:

At 9:40 this morning I weighed 71.85 kg (158.4 lb). That was a pound
or so above my weight road, mass – d – beeminder .
So I jumped around the house and did squats and burpees and things
until I had sweated out about 2 soda cans’ worth of sweat.

This is not healthy or sustainable. It is simply gaming the system to
alter
one datapoint. As soon as you rehydrate the weight is back on. This
sort of
behaviour should not be encouraged.

The idea that if we’re over the line one day we can try to claw our
ways
back down that day to correct it is kind of silly (and seems an
unhealthy
way to look at weight loss). [1] If I’ve reached the point that I’m
over
the line, I may have already lost (unless it was a weird, random upward
fluctuation). Today’s datapoint should matter less in weight loss goals
than
the trend. Today should matter only in so far as it’s a piece of that
trend.
I would greatly prefer having a road that is calibrated to derail
according
to an average. I think that’s way more stable a measurement for weight
loss
datapoints (because random fluctuations only effect it slightly since
the
surrounding points matter too) and it is, I believe, a healthier way to
think of weight loss. Today matters, because it could push my average
over,
but it’s not the focus.

This ^

Remember that if you’re truly akratic then
nothing really matters but the top edge of your yellow brick road. (If
you’re not truly akratic then just stay comfortably below the road and
ignore all this!)

Which is why, as a truly akratic person who tends to be most motivated
between the centreline and the top edge, it really sucks when an
anomalous
data point derails and resets your road.

If you have to try to lose weight in a day (when you’re going to be
(and
OUGHT to be) putting food and water into your body from the moment you
get
up), I think you’re in a bad place. I’m really leery of the idea of
trying
to recover on any single given day.

This^

I’d either like to beemind the purple line itself, or have a guarantee
that I won’t derail if the purple line is in the right lane.

I derailed a weight goal once due to water retention happening 2 days
in a row, even though my purple line was solidly in the right lane. I
found it so frustrating that I just stopped beeminding my weight.

This^

Have a user-defined period in the settings (for this type of goal
only) and
a “this is an anomalous datapoint” button. Clicking it begins a
countdown
clock. You can’t derail while on the countdown clock, but you see that
you’re over and need to be back down below the line before it runs out
in
3/5/7/10/14/whatever days. If it’s a legit anomaly, you will be and all
will
be well. If it’s not, it’s just a delayed derailment.

This is also a really great idea. You trust us to a certain extent not
to
cheat, why not trust us to point out anomalous readings?

Sorry for this massive post; on the bright side I can now spell,
“anomalous”

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You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google
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Goal tracking + Commitment contracts == http://beeminder.com

[Philip_Hellyer]

Hi Essy! Yep. I knew that my #2 would (probably) work for me and others
like me (i.e. with similar data patterns). General solutions are hard.

Maybe my #2 becomes a general solution if the number of up-days is
configurable. For me it’s 1. For someone else it might be 3 or 7 or 300. If
the structure is right, maybe we can vary the parameters to suit individual
circumstances. (For numbers > 1, we’ll also need to think about when to
auto-shrink the road again.)

My girlfriend (complete with complications from both gender and health)
started beeminding her weight and then stopped after a derail. Since then
she’s been fairly successful with (gasp!) just the withings scale and a
goal in her head. That’s almost the “don’t track it” option.

Thanks to the participants in this thread, my weight goal is now a second
order graph, with a gentle slope of -0.1kg per week to keep it moving in
the right direction. Whenever my weight gets meaninglessly far from the
road, I hit the retro-ratchet button and shrink my safety buffer.

Philip

On Wednesday, November 6, 2013 2:13:43 PM UTC, Essentiae wrote:

#2 wouldn’t solve the tax for women who track their weight (non
meaninglessly, i.e. without so much space between the road and the data
that it might as well be an excel file). It would only solve the problem
for men and for people without any health conditions (e.g. something like
IBS/IBD, I suppose) or perhaps medications that cause fluctuations for more
than a 24hr time span.

Current solutions: don’t track it, game the system yourself so that it’s
fair (using the fine print, “adjusted” data, and “codes in the comments”),
have a graph so pointless that it might as well be an excel or iwork file,
or have a $0 pledge.

I agree with Daniel that tracking behaviour is probably better, but it’s
also handy to be able have a second-order graph, in a sense, that
nudges/forces you towards making sure the behaviour you’re tracking is
making enough of a difference and doesn’t need to be
adjusted/supplemented/etc.

On Wednesday, November 6, 2013 8:29:24 AM UTC-5, pjh wrote:

I had an anomalous up-day recently and was saved by the magical road
width (which I thought we’d turned off!). So I wondered just how variable
my first-weigh-ins are — turns out that it’s not uncommon for me to have
jumps in excess of 2 pounds (c. 1% of body mass). My anomalous weigh-ins
only seem to last a day, so it’ll be up a kilo one morning, then back to
normal over the next 2-3 days.

My current belief is that we can dispense with the current implementation
of magical widening. But we still need to handle the variability of data,
including random up-days.

1. Road width must be tied to the variability of the data, just as it is
   today.

Without this, my weight road would become a thin “bright line” that I
need to gauge for myself how much distance to stay below. One of the jobs
of Beeminder is to help me understand and manage safety buffer.

2. Restrict magical widening to a one-day grace period, but ignore the
   starting lane.

This would eliminate a lot of my derailments. But only those where my
true trend is downward, not the ones that were legitimate, sustained
increases. This is short-term enough that it doesn’t create the “bingeing
when blue” reward that a semi-permanent widening can. So I don’t think that
it’s a material violation of Jill’s Rule. And it would simplify
communication of the feature if we didn’t have to bring “which lane” into
the conversation.

I beemind my weight conservatively, and only pledge an unchanging $5 on
it. This reduces my knee-jerk reaction to do “whatever it takes” to get
back on the road, and just accept the (no mercy!) derailment. To support
the weight loss goal, I also beemind stretching, going to the gym, and have
fitbit & runkeeper goals. I used to have an eat-better goal; now I try to
notice when my daily weigh-in is above the purple line and be more vigilant
about what goes in my mouth that day.

Beeminding the moving average is a seductive concept, but moving averages
aren’t magic. All they do is compare my weight today to my weight of N days
ago. One sign that we’ve cracked how weight graphs should work will be that
people (including me!) stop wanting to beemind the moving average.

Philip

P.S. Data points! Below is my day-to-day variability over the last 18
months, with reasonably consistent weigh-in conditions. The largest
variation from one morning to the next has been 1.5 kg. At least once each
month it’s more than 1 kg. One day in four it’s more than a pound. The
distribution’s median & mode are both 0.3 kg, average is 0.41 kg, with a
standard deviation of 0.32 kg.

https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/-_I6J6yNYnj8/Uno0weR_ipI/AAAAAAAAAAM/nORBVeEIc18/s1600/Withings+Variability.png

Delta

Count

%

Days Per Month

% with higher delta

Days Per Month

Days Per Year

0.0

48

10.2%

3

89.8%

27

328

0.1

56

11.9%

4

77.9%

23

284

0.2

63

13.4%

4

64.5%

19

235

0.3

74

15.7%

5

48.7%

15

178

0.4

41

8.7%

3

40.0%

12

146

0.5

61

13.0%

4

27.0%

8

99

0.6

29

6.2%

2

20.9%

6

76

0.7

27

5.7%

2

15.1%

5

55

0.8

24

5.1%

2

10.0%

3

37

0.9

10

2.1%

1

7.9%

2

29

1.0

20

4.3%

1

3.6%

1

13

1.1

2

0.4%

0

3.2%

1

12

1.2

3

0.6%

0

2.6%

1

9

1.3

7

1.5%

0

1.1%

0

4

1.4

2

0.4%

0

0.6%

0

2

1.5

3

0.6%

0

0.0%

0

0

On Tuesday, November 5, 2013 11:02:37 PM UTC, Daniel Reeves wrote:

Rosie, thanks so much for re-opening this discussion, and for the
cogent comments! I’m still mulling all these ideas, especially the
proposal to beemind the moving average.

I know it looks like gaming the system when you have an emergency
weight loss day and scramble to weigh in on the yellow brick road by
running around the block and doing squats and whatnot, or eating very
little all day to make sure you can weigh in lower in the evening. But
it is forcing workouts and calorie restriction to happen every so
often. So I claim that it is helping with the long-term goal as well
as the short-term goal. It’s certainly possible to do things that help
purely with the short-term goal. I personally haven’t felt any
temptation to do those things. I agree that you should try to keep
enough safety buffer that you don’t need to do anything crazy.

Fundamentally, you should only beemind things (or seriously beemind
things, where you let the pledge climb, and are often skating the edge
– where Beeminder is really pushing you) that are fully under your
control. Personally I view weight as fully under my control because
I’m perfectly willing to do things like just stop eating at a moment’s
notice to satisfy Beeminder. If you’re not into that kind of craziness
then I think it’s best to beemind other things like servings of junk
food [1] or workouts. And also beemind weight but super
conservatively. Like just keep the yellow brick road flat and ratchet
it down occasionally. That way you can see the results of your hard
work without stressing over something you don’t have full control
over.

PS: The reason I don’t like most of the proposals, like beeminding the
moving average or having an “anomalous datapoint” button is what we
now call Jill’s Rule, or Beeminder’s No Free Lunch Theorem:
Catch-up Unmustered; or, Easier is Harder | Beeminder Blog – anything that makes it easier to stay on
the road in the short term makes the overall goal harder.

[1] I also do this – sugar – d – beeminder – and love it, and it makes
beeminding my weight very easy – I very rarely have to do anything
crazy. I found it too high friction to have to pull out my phone each
time I ate something so I got an abacus bracelet –
http://knittingabacus.com/ – to keep track throughout the day.

On Tue, Nov 5, 2013 at 6:11 AM, Rosie G rosie.g...@gmail.com wrote:

I realise I am bumping an old thread, sorry about that

I was sent a link to this thread as I was having a “discussion” with
one of
the beeminder staff about what I perceived as an unfair weight
derailment.

In almost all of my recent derailments I have derailed due to a single
anomalous reading, the weight reading for the next day would have put
me
back on the original yellow road. Some points (somewhat condensed from
my
original lengthy emails)

• If you are consistently tracking above, but parallel to the centre
  line
  you are still making good progress, however as you are above
  centrepoint a
  single anomalous high reading will derail you.

• If you are approaching the upper limit of the road then you are more
  motivated to do more, if at that point you get an anomolus reading
  that
  derails you, your yellow road is reset and you suddenly have loads
  more
  leeway = less motivation for positive behaviours .

• It would be far better to track the purple line, than individual
  datapoints. Individual datapoints encourages unhealthy behaviour (as
  illustrated by a poster above)

Some things that have jumped out at me in this thread, and my
comments:

At 9:40 this morning I weighed 71.85 kg (158.4 lb). That was a pound
or so above my weight road, mass – d – beeminder .
So I jumped around the house and did squats and burpees and things
until I had sweated out about 2 soda cans’ worth of sweat.

This is not healthy or sustainable. It is simply gaming the system to
alter
one datapoint. As soon as you rehydrate the weight is back on. This
sort of
behaviour should not be encouraged.

The idea that if we’re over the line one day we can try to claw our
ways
back down that day to correct it is kind of silly (and seems an
unhealthy
way to look at weight loss). [1] If I’ve reached the point that I’m
over
the line, I may have already lost (unless it was a weird, random
upward
fluctuation). Today’s datapoint should matter less in weight loss
goals than
the trend. Today should matter only in so far as it’s a piece of that
trend.
I would greatly prefer having a road that is calibrated to derail
according
to an average. I think that’s way more stable a measurement for weight
loss
datapoints (because random fluctuations only effect it slightly since
the
surrounding points matter too) and it is, I believe, a healthier way
to
think of weight loss. Today matters, because it could push my average
over,
but it’s not the focus.

This ^

Remember that if you’re truly akratic then
nothing really matters but the top edge of your yellow brick road. (If
you’re not truly akratic then just stay comfortably below the road and
ignore all this!)

Which is why, as a truly akratic person who tends to be most motivated
between the centreline and the top edge, it really sucks when an
anomalous
data point derails and resets your road.

If you have to try to lose weight in a day (when you’re going to be
(and
OUGHT to be) putting food and water into your body from the moment you
get
up), I think you’re in a bad place. I’m really leery of the idea of
trying
to recover on any single given day.

This^

I’d either like to beemind the purple line itself, or have a guarantee
that I won’t derail if the purple line is in the right lane.

I derailed a weight goal once due to water retention happening 2 days
in a row, even though my purple line was solidly in the right lane. I
found it so frustrating that I just stopped beeminding my weight.

This^

Have a user-defined period in the settings (for this type of goal
only) and
a “this is an anomalous datapoint” button. Clicking it begins a
countdown
clock. You can’t derail while on the countdown clock, but you see that
you’re over and need to be back down below the line before it runs out
in
3/5/7/10/14/whatever days. If it’s a legit anomaly, you will be and
all will
be well. If it’s not, it’s just a delayed derailment.

This is also a really great idea. You trust us to a certain extent not
to
cheat, why not trust us to point out anomalous readings?

Sorry for this massive post; on the bright side I can now spell,
“anomalous”

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[Kirsty_Darbyshire]

Maybe my #2 becomes a general solution if the number of up-days is
configurable. For me it’s 1. For someone else it might be 3 or 7 or 300. If
the structure is right, maybe we can vary the parameters to suit individual
circumstances. (For numbers > 1, we’ll also need to think about when to
auto-shrink the road again.)

My feeling is that the problem with the weight graphs is the concept of an
“emergency day”. I’m now running mine with a lot of safety buffer days but
keeping in my head an idea that it’s more like an “emergency week” or an
“emergency month” to keep below the line. (I guess there is a knock on
effect for the distance to the akrasia horizon too.) Mostly though I’m
finding beeminding things where I have absolute control over the value that
goes on the graph today much more successful from a motivational point of
view.

kirsty

[Noah_Wilde]

Agreed.

I think the problem here is that as highly akratic people, we’re tempted to
skate the edges of our road.s And then we blame Beeminder when we
accidentally fall of them because of a temporary blip. But it’s not
Beeminder’s fault we were so perilously close to the road edge!

So what I’ve started to do is force myself to skate a safety buffer
instead. So, for example, if I have less than 5 days safety buffer, then I
will purposefully eat a lot less so that I can bring myself back into a
safe zone, way before I actually derail.

If even went so far as to beemind this. That is, I set up another goal, and
gave myself a “1” or a “0” for that day, depending on whether I was
observing my rules about how I should respond to the amount of safety
buffer I have left.

My person rule is that if I have less than 7 days safety buffer, I cannot
eat more than specific amount of calories. And amount which I know is low
enough to be healthy in the short term, but also induce fairly rapid weight
loss.

Hope this makes sense!

On 6 November 2013 17:22, Kirsty Darbyshire kirstyd@gmail.com wrote:

Maybe my #2 becomes a general solution if the number of up-days is
configurable. For me it’s 1. For someone else it might be 3 or 7 or 300. If
the structure is right, maybe we can vary the parameters to suit individual
circumstances. (For numbers > 1, we’ll also need to think about when to
auto-shrink the road again.)

My feeling is that the problem with the weight graphs is the concept of an
“emergency day”. I’m now running mine with a lot of safety buffer days but
keeping in my head an idea that it’s more like an “emergency week” or an
“emergency month” to keep below the line. (I guess there is a knock on
effect for the distance to the akrasia horizon too.) Mostly though I’m
finding beeminding things where I have absolute control over the value that
goes on the graph today much more successful from a motivational point of
view.

kirsty

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[Philip_Hellyer]

Beeminding the Moving Average

This has come up a few times, usually in the context of weight loss. So I
thought I’d share my current thinking, and my current solution that may
have been inspired by Noah’s comment about creating a meta-goal about
‘observing his rules’.

There’s nothing magic about a moving average. If it’s a simple average[1]
over say, the last 30 days, then when it goes up, all that means is that
today’s datapoint is higher than the datapoint 31 days ago. Really simple.
Useful for seeing a trend and taking out some of the noise.

Because weight fluctuates, people are drawn to the idea of beeminding the
moving average rather than today’s poundage. It’s a flawed idea, because of
the multiplying effect of the average. On an emergency weight day[2], say
you’re 1/2 lb too heavy (eep! above the road!). As Beeminder works now, you
eat a bit less, sweat a bit more, and with a bit of luck can scramble back
on the road later in the day. If your moving average line crept above the
road by just a little, you need to drag the average back down on the
road, not just today’s weight. And that’s 10x (or whatever) harder, because
there’s no free lunch.[3]

My recent epiphany about the moving average is this:

Beemind where your datapoints are in relation to the moving average.

Because the one thing that we know for certain is this: that if your
weigh-ins generally fall below the moving average, you’re losing weight.

So I created myself a disjunctive goal[4] that’s related to both eating and
weight. You can read my fine print on my graph page,[5] but in effect it
says that on days when my first weigh-in of the day is above the moving
average, I will more vigilantly eat better than usual.

This was made possible by an earlier revelation from Essentiae, that weight
loss is an outcome[6] and that we should alse beemind the related
behaviours. This is my first attempt at (roughly!) beeminding diet, because
I don’t have any interest in obsessively counting calories or cataloguing
everything that I eat and drink.

An unexpected side effect is that I pretty much only stand on the scale
once each day. I was never obessive about it, but now I have an interest in
not dragging down my moving average by weighing in after going for a run.

I still haven’t quite figured out how I should measure this disjunctive
goal of mine, since just being below the moving average shouldn’t be a
prompt to eat badly. Equally, I don’t want success to depend on me weighing
in below the average. And I’m irrationally resistant to fine print that can
earn more than one point in a day. For now I’m keeping an eye out for
binging, and giving myself full marks for (eating better OR 1st weigh-in
below average) and a partial credit for (1st weigh-in touching the average).

I welcome your thoughts on my (possibly) mad scheme. Thanks in advance.

Philip

[1] Beeminder’s skinny purple line has some exponential smoothing, but the
general idea is still valid.

[2] For the purposes of this discussion, we can ignore the whole rest of
the yellow brick road. Because as akratics, the only thing that really
matters is the dangerous edge. Witness how much doesn’t get done until it’s
a beemergency day!

[3] Danny had this to say earlier:

You’re actually requiring a bunch more foresight to keep from derailing,
which I think is a nonstarter. In general, being akratic and beeminding the
moving average still means that you’re skating the edge and every day
there’s some magic weight that you must weigh in at to keep from derailing.
That’s fundamental to beeminding weight. No matter how you try to smooth
the data or widen the road, if you eked by yesterday then there will
necessarily be a magic weight that you absolutely must hit today to stay on
track. It’s like a no-free-lunch theorem.

[4] Danny is skeptical; he says “you can enter a 1 for a disjunction of
predicates which is technically exactly true, but it has no QS value.” I
agree insofar that some of the predicates might be independently useful, so
this desire to combine items could be entirely dysfunctional. Disjunctions
for dysfunctions, that’s what I say!

[5] The fine print on my eat
better goal could be of
interest. Heck, the fine print on any of my goals might be of introspective
interest. I’m happy to discuss the logic or illogic of any of them…

[6] Essy wrote:

Most Beeminded goals are behaviour (read more of this, eat less of that,
run more, lift more, smoke less, whatever); weight loss is not a behaviour,
it’s an outcome of behaviour. Outcomes are less predictable and less in our
direct control than behaviour, and I think a system that measures an
outcome too tightly is a little off. Behaviour should be measured
tightly; an outcome should be measured more loosely, and thought of as
being representative of behaviour that needs to be altered.

[Noah_Wilde]

What is “Reed’s rule” btw?

On 18 January 2014 20:21, pjh philip@hellyer.net wrote:

Beeminding the Moving Average

This has come up a few times, usually in the context of weight loss. So I
thought I’d share my current thinking, and my current solution that may
have been inspired by Noah’s comment about creating a meta-goal about
‘observing his rules’.

There’s nothing magic about a moving average. If it’s a simple average[1]
over say, the last 30 days, then when it goes up, all that means is that
today’s datapoint is higher than the datapoint 31 days ago. Really simple.
Useful for seeing a trend and taking out some of the noise.

Because weight fluctuates, people are drawn to the idea of beeminding the
moving average rather than today’s poundage. It’s a flawed idea, because of
the multiplying effect of the average. On an emergency weight day[2], say
you’re 1/2 lb too heavy (eep! above the road!). As Beeminder works now, you
eat a bit less, sweat a bit more, and with a bit of luck can scramble back
on the road later in the day. If your moving average line crept above the
road by just a little, you need to drag the average back down on the
road, not just today’s weight. And that’s 10x (or whatever) harder, because
there’s no free lunch.[3]

My recent epiphany about the moving average is this:

Beemind where your datapoints are in relation to the moving average.

Because the one thing that we know for certain is this: that if your
weigh-ins generally fall below the moving average, you’re losing weight.

So I created myself a disjunctive goal[4] that’s related to both eating
and weight. You can read my fine print on my graph page,[5] but in effect
it says that on days when my first weigh-in of the day is above the moving
average, I will more vigilantly eat better than usual.

This was made possible by an earlier revelation from Essentiae, that
weight loss is an outcome[6] and that we should alse beemind the related
behaviours. This is my first attempt at (roughly!) beeminding diet, because
I don’t have any interest in obsessively counting calories or cataloguing
everything that I eat and drink.

An unexpected side effect is that I pretty much only stand on the scale
once each day. I was never obessive about it, but now I have an interest in
not dragging down my moving average by weighing in after going for a run.

I still haven’t quite figured out how I should measure this disjunctive
goal of mine, since just being below the moving average shouldn’t be a
prompt to eat badly. Equally, I don’t want success to depend on me weighing
in below the average. And I’m irrationally resistant to fine print that can
earn more than one point in a day. For now I’m keeping an eye out for
binging, and giving myself full marks for (eating better OR 1st weigh-in
below average) and a partial credit for (1st weigh-in touching the average).

I welcome your thoughts on my (possibly) mad scheme. Thanks in advance.

Philip

[1] Beeminder’s skinny purple line has some exponential smoothing, but the
general idea is still valid.

[2] For the purposes of this discussion, we can ignore the whole rest of
the yellow brick road. Because as akratics, the only thing that really
matters is the dangerous edge. Witness how much doesn’t get done until it’s
a beemergency day!

[3] Danny had this to say earlier:

You’re actually requiring a bunch more foresight to keep from derailing,

which I think is a nonstarter. In general, being akratic and beeminding the
moving average still means that you’re skating the edge and every day
there’s some magic weight that you must weigh in at to keep from derailing.
That’s fundamental to beeminding weight. No matter how you try to smooth
the data or widen the road, if you eked by yesterday then there will
necessarily be a magic weight that you absolutely must hit today to stay on
track. It’s like a no-free-lunch theorem.

[4] Danny is skeptical; he says “you can enter a 1 for a disjunction of
predicates which is technically exactly true, but it has no QS value.” I
agree insofar that some of the predicates might be independently useful, so
this desire to combine items could be entirely dysfunctional. Disjunctions
for dysfunctions, that’s what I say!

[5] The fine print on my eat better goal could be of interest.
Heck, the fine print on any of my goals might be of introspective interest.
I’m happy to discuss the logic or illogic of any of them…

[6] Essy wrote:

Most Beeminded goals are behaviour (read more of this, eat less of that,
run more, lift more, smoke less, whatever); weight loss is not a behaviour,
it’s an outcome of behaviour. Outcomes are less predictable and less in our
direct control than behaviour, and I think a system that measures an
outcome too tightly is a little off. Behaviour should be measured
tightly; an outcome should be measured more loosely, and thought of as
being representative of behaviour that needs to be altered.

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[Philip_Hellyer]

Hi Noah!

My friend lost a couple stone last year, and he started with one rule:

When in doubt, choose the healthy option; except when it would be rude

So if I’m dithering between lunch options, or snacks, or whatever, this
skews me toward the healthier one.

If I really really want the doughnut, ok, that’s fine. There’s something
else clearly going on.

And every now and again, someone says: “hey, I made a cake!” So you get to
have some, in the avoidance of rudeness. Happily (or unhappily) I don’t
work in an environment where this is a frequent danger.

But if they say “hey, I bought doughnuts”, you don’t get a free ride. Ditto
if you go back for a second slice of that cake…

He ended up with a handful of related rules. From imperfect memory:

Read’s Rules:

1. when in doubt, choose the healthy option; except when it would be
   rude
2. no temporary measures; make sustainable changes
3. eat today as your future self eats

*cake is for celebration, not despair *

(I’m sure there were at least 5, so I’ve lost some and mis-stated others.)

On Monday, 20 January 2014 09:43:57 UTC, Noah Wilde wrote:

What is “Reed’s rule” btw?

On 18 January 2014 20:21, pjh <phi...@hellyer.net <javascript:>> wrote:

Beeminding the Moving Average

This has come up a few times, usually in the context of weight loss. So I
thought I’d share my current thinking, and my current solution that may
have been inspired by Noah’s comment about creating a meta-goal about
‘observing his rules’.

There’s nothing magic about a moving average. If it’s a simple average[1]
over say, the last 30 days, then when it goes up, all that means is that
today’s datapoint is higher than the datapoint 31 days ago. Really simple.
Useful for seeing a trend and taking out some of the noise.

Because weight fluctuates, people are drawn to the idea of beeminding the
moving average rather than today’s poundage. It’s a flawed idea, because of
the multiplying effect of the average. On an emergency weight day[2], say
you’re 1/2 lb too heavy (eep! above the road!). As Beeminder works now, you
eat a bit less, sweat a bit more, and with a bit of luck can scramble back
on the road later in the day. If your moving average line crept above the
road by just a little, you need to drag the average back down on the
road, not just today’s weight. And that’s 10x (or whatever) harder, because
there’s no free lunch.[3]

My recent epiphany about the moving average is this:

Beemind where your datapoints are in relation to the moving average.

Because the one thing that we know for certain is this: that if your
weigh-ins generally fall below the moving average, you’re losing weight.

So I created myself a disjunctive goal[4] that’s related to both eating
and weight. You can read my fine print on my graph page,[5] but in effect
it says that on days when my first weigh-in of the day is above the moving
average, I will more vigilantly eat better than usual.

This was made possible by an earlier revelation from Essentiae, that
weight loss is an outcome[6] and that we should alse beemind the related
behaviours. This is my first attempt at (roughly!) beeminding diet, because
I don’t have any interest in obsessively counting calories or cataloguing
everything that I eat and drink.

An unexpected side effect is that I pretty much only stand on the scale
once each day. I was never obessive about it, but now I have an interest in
not dragging down my moving average by weighing in after going for a run.

I still haven’t quite figured out how I should measure this disjunctive
goal of mine, since just being below the moving average shouldn’t be a
prompt to eat badly. Equally, I don’t want success to depend on me weighing
in below the average. And I’m irrationally resistant to fine print that can
earn more than one point in a day. For now I’m keeping an eye out for
binging, and giving myself full marks for (eating better OR 1st weigh-in
below average) and a partial credit for (1st weigh-in touching the average).

I welcome your thoughts on my (possibly) mad scheme. Thanks in advance.

Philip

[1] Beeminder’s skinny purple line has some exponential smoothing, but
the general idea is still valid.

[2] For the purposes of this discussion, we can ignore the whole rest of
the yellow brick road. Because as akratics, the only thing that really
matters is the dangerous edge. Witness how much doesn’t get done until it’s
a beemergency day!

[3] Danny had this to say earlier:

You’re actually requiring a bunch more foresight to keep from derailing,

which I think is a nonstarter. In general, being akratic and beeminding the
moving average still means that you’re skating the edge and every day
there’s some magic weight that you must weigh in at to keep from derailing.
That’s fundamental to beeminding weight. No matter how you try to smooth
the data or widen the road, if you eked by yesterday then there will
necessarily be a magic weight that you absolutely must hit today to stay on
track. It’s like a no-free-lunch theorem.

[4] Danny is skeptical; he says “you can enter a 1 for a disjunction of
predicates which is technically exactly true, but it has no QS value.” I
agree insofar that some of the predicates might be independently useful, so
this desire to combine items could be entirely dysfunctional. Disjunctions
for dysfunctions, that’s what I say!

[5] The fine print on my eat better goal could be of interest.
Heck, the fine print on any of my goals might be of introspective interest.
I’m happy to discuss the logic or illogic of any of them…

[6] Essy wrote:

Most Beeminded goals are behaviour (read more of this, eat less of that,
run more, lift more, smoke less, whatever); weight loss is not a behaviour,
it’s an outcome of behaviour. Outcomes are less predictable and less in our
direct control than behaviour, and I think a system that measures an
outcome too tightly is a little off. Behaviour should be measured
tightly; an outcome should be measured more loosely, and thought of as
being representative of behaviour that needs to be altered.

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You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups
“Akratics Anonymous” group.
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[Noah_Wilde]

Thanks!

On 20 January 2014 12:33, pjh philip@hellyer.net wrote:

Hi Noah!

My friend lost a couple stone last year, and he started with one rule:

When in doubt, choose the healthy option; except when it would be rude

So if I’m dithering between lunch options, or snacks, or whatever, this
skews me toward the healthier one.

If I really really want the doughnut, ok, that’s fine. There’s something
else clearly going on.

And every now and again, someone says: “hey, I made a cake!” So you get to
have some, in the avoidance of rudeness. Happily (or unhappily) I don’t
work in an environment where this is a frequent danger.

But if they say “hey, I bought doughnuts”, you don’t get a free ride.
Ditto if you go back for a second slice of that cake…

He ended up with a handful of related rules. From imperfect memory:

Read’s Rules:

1. when in doubt, choose the healthy option; except when it would be
   rude
2. no temporary measures; make sustainable changes
3. eat today as your future self eats

*cake is for celebration, not despair *

(I’m sure there were at least 5, so I’ve lost some and mis-stated others.)

On Monday, 20 January 2014 09:43:57 UTC, Noah Wilde wrote:

What is “Reed’s rule” btw?

On 18 January 2014 20:21, pjh phi...@hellyer.net wrote:

Beeminding the Moving Average

This has come up a few times, usually in the context of weight loss. So
I thought I’d share my current thinking, and my current solution that may
have been inspired by Noah’s comment about creating a meta-goal about
‘observing his rules’.

There’s nothing magic about a moving average. If it’s a simple
average[1] over say, the last 30 days, then when it goes up, all that means
is that today’s datapoint is higher than the datapoint 31 days ago. Really
simple. Useful for seeing a trend and taking out some of the noise.

Because weight fluctuates, people are drawn to the idea of beeminding
the moving average rather than today’s poundage. It’s a flawed idea,
because of the multiplying effect of the average. On an emergency weight
day[2], say you’re 1/2 lb too heavy (eep! above the road!). As Beeminder
works now, you eat a bit less, sweat a bit more, and with a bit of luck can
scramble back on the road later in the day. If your moving average line
crept above the road by just a little, you need to drag the average back
down on the road, not just today’s weight. And that’s 10x (or whatever)
harder, because there’s no free lunch.[3]

My recent epiphany about the moving average is this:

Beemind where your datapoints are in relation to the moving average.

Because the one thing that we know for certain is this: that if your
weigh-ins generally fall below the moving average, you’re losing weight.

So I created myself a disjunctive goal[4] that’s related to both eating
and weight. You can read my fine print on my graph page,[5] but in effect
it says that on days when my first weigh-in of the day is above the moving
average, I will more vigilantly eat better than usual.

This was made possible by an earlier revelation from Essentiae, that
weight loss is an outcome[6] and that we should alse beemind the related
behaviours. This is my first attempt at (roughly!) beeminding diet, because
I don’t have any interest in obsessively counting calories or cataloguing
everything that I eat and drink.

An unexpected side effect is that I pretty much only stand on the scale
once each day. I was never obessive about it, but now I have an interest in
not dragging down my moving average by weighing in after going for a run.

I still haven’t quite figured out how I should measure this disjunctive
goal of mine, since just being below the moving average shouldn’t be a
prompt to eat badly. Equally, I don’t want success to depend on me weighing
in below the average. And I’m irrationally resistant to fine print that can
earn more than one point in a day. For now I’m keeping an eye out for
binging, and giving myself full marks for (eating better OR 1st weigh-in
below average) and a partial credit for (1st weigh-in touching the average).

I welcome your thoughts on my (possibly) mad scheme. Thanks in advance.

Philip

[1] Beeminder’s skinny purple line has some exponential smoothing, but
the general idea is still valid.

[2] For the purposes of this discussion, we can ignore the whole rest of
the yellow brick road. Because as akratics, the only thing that really
matters is the dangerous edge. Witness how much doesn’t get done until it’s
a beemergency day!

[3] Danny had this to say earlier:

You’re actually requiring a bunch more foresight to keep from derailing,

which I think is a nonstarter. In general, being akratic and beeminding the
moving average still means that you’re skating the edge and every day
there’s some magic weight that you must weigh in at to keep from derailing.
That’s fundamental to beeminding weight. No matter how you try to smooth
the data or widen the road, if you eked by yesterday then there will
necessarily be a magic weight that you absolutely must hit today to stay on
track. It’s like a no-free-lunch theorem.

[4] Danny is skeptical; he says “you can enter a 1 for a disjunction of
predicates which is technically exactly true, but it has no QS value.” I
agree insofar that some of the predicates might be independently useful, so
this desire to combine items could be entirely dysfunctional. Disjunctions
for dysfunctions, that’s what I say!

[5] The fine print on my [eat better](https://www.beeminder.
com/pjh/goals/eat ) goal could be of interest. Heck, the fine print on
any of my goals might be of introspective interest. I’m happy to discuss
the logic or illogic of any of them…

[6] Essy wrote:

Most Beeminded goals are behaviour (read more of this, eat less of
that, run more, lift more, smoke less, whatever); weight loss is not a
behaviour, it’s an outcome of behaviour. Outcomes are less predictable and
less in our direct control than behaviour, and I think a system that
measures an outcome too tightly is a little off. Behaviour should be
measured tightly; an outcome should be measured more loosely, and thought
of as being representative of behaviour that needs to be altered.

–
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