Road limit precision in view and emails?

Is there a way to show more precision in the emails and dashboard view of a goal target?

Here’s the issue…let’s say its a weight goal. Today is an eep day. The emails and dashboard will say “x88.5” required.

Great. You weight in at x88.5 exactly at 11:55pm. Woohoo!

Except… I check the full site, and am still over the road by 0.03. A number of higher precision than shown elsewhere, at at least higher than in the emails. Sadness. A cheated feeling.

When that happens, well…its more frustrating than helpful, so I fudge the fitbit data down by the fraction. (And fitbit rounds down when it shouldn’t…it’s actually a mess of silly rounding on weights – but that’s not a Beeminder issue.)

I suppose you could argue the opposite and that 0.03 real. But it would not motivate me. I feel like I achieved what I though I needed to.

Anywho, just thinking outloud. I think either the emails/graph target (in addition to graph delta) should show the precision needed (ie. in this case “x88.47” or ignore precision of less than the source automation will provide…like you’ll never get more than 1 decimal from fitbit, so apply rounding automatically to over/under the road at the same precision.)

I know, stay ahead of the road. :slight_smile: Eeps are motivating though…

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It’s not a precision problem, it’s an accuracy problem. The values in the eeps and dashboard should be fixed so that when you hit the stated target, you’re on the road.

We try to round them in the right direction so as to cause the opposite surprise; when the road demands x88.47 (as in your example), the dashboard should ask for x88.4.
(Assuming that one decimal place is the right spot to round this goal, of course.)

Yes, it’s true that this means that you’ve done slightly more than what was needed, but that’s so much better than having the target move out from under you.

And if your scale had reported x88.45, then you’d be on the road even though you didn’t quite reach what the dashboard stated. Which is also mildly weird, but at least would preserve the nice property that if you do what the dashboard says, you’re on the road.

Determining the right number of decimals is non-trivial, given the variety of goals that people track.

Related: folks with integery goals want the number of decimals to be zero, and for the dashboards to tell them the right minimum number. I suspect that we’ll solve both these things together.

Does that mean that you’re seeing incorrect target numbers somewhere other than the website? More info will be helpful in tracking down the bug. You can email support@ if you want to give examples privately.

Thanks so much for reporting this!

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