

Ask HN: Please seed my survey to raise awareness about obesity - kbrower
http://obesitynearme.com/

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sounddust
I don't know if you're interested in statistics from outside the US, but if
so, you should offer the ability to enter height in meters (or cm) and weight
in kg.

Also, the A8 in "Paris, A8, FR" makes no sense, and it reminds me of those
auto-geolocation ads that nonsensically say "Meet women in Paris, A8 now!" You
should probably just drop the region altogether for most countries.

Finally, I don't think you should show any aggregate data until you get at
least 4-5 responses, as you're leaking individual info. For example, just from
what I've posted in this comment, anyone can deduct my height and weight from
the "stats" on the site, which is not what I expected from filling out a
survey (in this case I don't really care, but I'm sure others would).

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glymor
It's true, Chrome is the lightest browser: <http://obesitynearme.com/browser/>

And Vista is indeed significantly heavier: <http://obesitynearme.com/os/>

Also people from reddit are apparently fat:
<http://obesitynearme.com/referrer/>

_(All results correct at time of publication)_

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glymor
On an individual basis waist-hip ratio <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waist-
hip_ratio> is a better metric. BMI is a tool for populations as a whole.

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nbrochu
Got a little bug with location... For some reason, it thinks "Montreal,
Canada" is located in Ontario, so I kind of warped your results without
knowing.

Also, and I know this is probably not intentional, but most people outside the
United States will cringe when they see "and the rest of the world" with only
a map of the states on the page.

Other than that, I liked the results page and all the statistics it provided!

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brown9-2
These datapoints are a little scary:

 _\- Your BMI is 26, which means you are Overweight

\- Your BMI is lower than 42% of people who submitted this survey

\- Your BMI is lower than 63% of 27 year olds

\- Your BMI is lower than 39% of people from news.ycombinator.com _

Sounds as if the people sampled skew young and overweight.

Tangentially, is there a better metric for something like this besides BMI? I
recall some people having issue with BMI as a measurement, since it doesn't
account for what your weight is composed of (fat vs muscle content).

edit: for anyone else interested in the shortcomings of BMI, wikipedia seems
to have a good summary:
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index#Limitations_and...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Body_mass_index#Limitations_and_shortcomings)

~~~
glymor
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Waist-hip_ratio> is more useful for most of the
obesity risk factors.

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SapphireSun
This is pretty cool. However, I recommend not ranking people in a weight class
that equals their weight (IE You are % of people who weigh x lbs) because here
will not be enough samples at a specific weight. Try using intervals of 5 lbs.

~~~
kbrower
Good idea, I will make it work with 5lb intervals

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r00k
Getting the captcha wrong clears all the fields. That's pretty cruel,
usability-wise.

~~~
kbrower
I will fix this

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ErrantX
Another Kohana user I see :D

I caused an error :(

<http://obesitynearme.com/city/Sleaford/H7/GB/>

~~~
kbrower
Yeah, Kohana is great! Thanks for catching that error. It has been fixed.

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SMrF
If this is to raise awareness, you might want to reword the stats. I found
them slightly hard to parse.

"Your BMI is lower than 37% of people who submitted this survey."

This might be better written as, "You are fatter than 60% of people who
submitted this survey." Ouch.

Also, if obesity is an epidemic then over time won't these results normalize?
So I'm fatter than I should be but so is everyone else, so I don't look so bad
in these results.

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robin_reala
Can you get rid of the global letter-spacing? It’s OK for some titles, but it
kills the browser’s built-in font kerning and makes everything harder to read.

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mrduncan
Nifty. One suggestion: let me click on states in the image of the US instead
of having to click on the image and then find the state in the list.

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maxdemarzi
"Your BMI is lower than 0% of people from IL"

I'm a fat bastard!

I'm showing up as Windows 2003, but I'm on Windows XP 64-bit.

~~~
JshWright
Yeah... I'm the fattest person in New York so far...

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a-priori
_Your BMI is lower than 100% of people who submitted this survey_

Is this your way of saying I'm a wimpy nerd? :)

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thrdOriginal
My location was auto-populated as "Middletown, RI, US" - I manually changed it
to be correct (Chicago, IL, US), but when I submitted the results page showed
my % in terms of Middletown and in terms of RI. I was confused as to whether
it was comparing me to RI for a reason, or if my Chicago input didn't stick.

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ottbot
Do you plan on only having data for the US? If not, have you considered adding
the ability to enter data in metric?

~~~
kbrower
I have just considered it, and I will add it.

~~~
garyrichardson
Looks like there are a few other Canadians trying this out. I would definitely
pass it on to friends if it showed a provincial break down as well.

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heyitsnick
I can't seem to select any location from England, UK. Typing "England" gives
me various options in the US and europe. Typing "London" gives me options in
south africa and US. "london, england" returns no results. Similar issues
trying my small town or county.

~~~
ErrantX
My small UK town seemed to work - try a nearby city.

The app seems to use United Kingdom btw, you may have morel luck trying that.

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rezrovs
I typed in my location as London, England but on the 'Your Results' page my
location had been changed to Ilford K8, GB. It's very difficult to get it to
show me the option for London, United Kingdom.

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arthurk
"Division by zero" error at <http://obesitynearme.com/country/DE/>

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jules
> Your BMI is lower than 97% of people who submitted this survey

And I'm much bigger than a few years ago...

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rezrovs
And what use is the graph 'Obesity by Operating System'?

~~~
pgbovine
... at the risk of getting downvoted for low-brow digg-like links:

[http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/09/are-linux-programmers-
getti...](http://techcrunch.com/2008/09/09/are-linux-programmers-getting-too-
fat/)

