I have to admit that when I’m out on my bike, cross country skiing, or hiking, I’m likely using a fitness app to track how far and how fast I go. I may rethink that seeing as a study by the University of Toronto shows these fitness apps may not be nearly as accurate as I thought. Here’s what the Toronto Star had to say:
The pedometer applications were measured against a Yamax SW-200 pedometer (which sells for about $33 on Amazon.) In three of the four tests, they fared worse than the pedometer and were off by a significant margin: plus or minus 5 per cent.
In the most basic of the tests, the researchers asked people to walk 20 steps at a normal pace. Moves underestimated the number of steps by about 30 per cent, Accupedo by roughly 25 per cent. Runtastic over-reported the steps by more than 10 per cent. The pedometer was almost spot-on.
The only test where one of the apps bested the pedometer was in the 40-step stair climb, where Runtastic registered a negative 3.41 per cent to the pedometer’s plus 10 per cent.
In a free-living trial, in which participants were told to live as usual while running the apps and wearing the pedometer for at least 10 hours per day for three days, the applications were significantly wrong again.
“Overall, the applications were neither valid nor consistent in the sample population under both controlled lab test and free-living conditions,” the authors say.
While this is a wee bit disconcerting, I want to see how the makers of these apps respond to this study. Perhaps they’ll up their game to make them more accurate. Hopefully they won’t dismiss this study out of hand as that does nobody any good.
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This entry was posted on February 2, 2016 at 8:38 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Apps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed.
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Fitness Tracking Apps Overestimate Activity
I have to admit that when I’m out on my bike, cross country skiing, or hiking, I’m likely using a fitness app to track how far and how fast I go. I may rethink that seeing as a study by the University of Toronto shows these fitness apps may not be nearly as accurate as I thought. Here’s what the Toronto Star had to say:
The pedometer applications were measured against a Yamax SW-200 pedometer (which sells for about $33 on Amazon.) In three of the four tests, they fared worse than the pedometer and were off by a significant margin: plus or minus 5 per cent.
In the most basic of the tests, the researchers asked people to walk 20 steps at a normal pace. Moves underestimated the number of steps by about 30 per cent, Accupedo by roughly 25 per cent. Runtastic over-reported the steps by more than 10 per cent. The pedometer was almost spot-on.
The only test where one of the apps bested the pedometer was in the 40-step stair climb, where Runtastic registered a negative 3.41 per cent to the pedometer’s plus 10 per cent.
In a free-living trial, in which participants were told to live as usual while running the apps and wearing the pedometer for at least 10 hours per day for three days, the applications were significantly wrong again.
“Overall, the applications were neither valid nor consistent in the sample population under both controlled lab test and free-living conditions,” the authors say.
While this is a wee bit disconcerting, I want to see how the makers of these apps respond to this study. Perhaps they’ll up their game to make them more accurate. Hopefully they won’t dismiss this study out of hand as that does nobody any good.
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This entry was posted on February 2, 2016 at 8:38 am and is filed under Commentary with tags Apps. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.