Personal metrics: Users’ experiences and perceptions of self-tracking practices and data

Self-tracking is becoming a prominent and ubiquitous feature in contemporary practices of health and wellness management. Over the last few years, we have witnessed a rapid development in digital tracking devices, apps and platforms, together with the emergence of health movements such as the Quantified Self. As the world is becoming increasingly ruled by metrics and data, we are becoming ever more reliant on technologies of tracking and measurement to manage and evaluate various spheres of our lives including work, leisure, performance, and health. In this article, I begin by briefly outlining some of the key theoretical approaches that have been informing the scholarly debates on the rise of self-tracking. I then move on to discuss at length the findings of an international survey study I conducted with users of self-tracking technologies to discuss the ways in which they perceive and experience these practices, and the various rationales behind their adoption of self-tracking in the first place. The article also addresses participants’ attitudes towards issues of privacy and data sharing and protection. These attitudes seem to be dominated by a lack of concern regarding the use and sharing of self-tracking data with third parties. Some of the overarching sentiments vis-à-vis these issues can be roughly categorized according to feelings of ‘trust’ towards companies and how they handle data, a sense of ‘resignation’ in the face of what is perceived as an all-encompassing and ubiquitous data use, feelings of ‘self-insignificance’ which translates into the belief that one’s data is of no value to others, and the familiar expression of ‘the innocent have nothing to hide’. Overall, this article highlights the benefits and risks of self-tracking practices as experienced and articulated by the participants, while providing a critical reflection on the rise of personal metrics and the culture of measurement and quantification.

SCR-Normalize: A novel trajectory planning method based on explicit quintic polynomial curves

This paper presents a framework for generating explicit quintic polynomial curves as the trajectory of autonomous vehicles. The method is called SCR-Normalize and is founded on two novel ideas. The first concept is to rotate the coordinate reference, regarding the boundary conditions, in order to reach a special coordinate reference called Secondary Coordinate Reference (SCR). In the SCR, the explicit quintic polynomial curve has short length and low curvature values (i.e. the curve is not wiggly). The second concept is to normalize the trajectory in order to speed up the framework. Two kinds of problems are considered to be solved in this paper: (a) generating a length optimal trajectory for arbitrary boundary conditions subject to a curvature constraint; and (b) path smoothing. For case (a), for the lane change manoeuvre, the problem is solved explicitly. In addition, the familiar expression for the optimal interval of the lane change manoeuvre is analytically proved for the first time. For arbitrary swerving manoeuvres, two algorithms are presented and their performance is compared with each other and with two other algorithms. Similarly, for case (b), an algorithm is presented and its performance is compared with three other methods. Evaluating the algorithms in the examples, and comparing the results with other methods illustrates the efficiency of the SCR-Normalize framework to generate optimal trajectories in real time.

Introduction

When we survey the rich terrain of ancient ethics and the different visions of the best human character that flourished within it, there is one element—one virtue within these visions—that stands out as particularly distinctive. This is a virtue usually translated as ‘magnanimity’ or ‘greatness of soul’. For philosophical readers, its most familiar expression is the one it received at the hands of Aristotle in the ...

Addressing an Undergraduate Research Issue about Normalized Change for Critical Thinking Test

<p>Normalized change is a familiar expression used to measure student’s improvement in physics education research, including critical thinking skill improvement. A widely used standardized critical thinking test is the Cornell Critical Thinking Test. The CCTT scoring method, rights minus one-half the number wrong, results from possible interval scores ranging from the negative minimum score to positive maximum score. The problem then arises in the use of the normalized change in CCTT scores, particularly in the situation when the post-test score is worse than the pre-test score. We reveal the used equation deficiencies and demonstrate the mistakes made by undergraduate researchers, as well as suggesting a modified equation that can be used under the normalized change rationale, i.e. the ratio of the gain or the loss of the maximum possible gain or loss. Some frequently asked questions about normalized change are also discussed.</p>

Online Learning Teams

Team player, a familiar expression in many educational and workplace environments, is also an important component of online learning environments. The inclusion of teams and groups in discussions, group projects, problem-solving exercises, and role playing activities is a vital part of teaching and learning that encourages students’ social interaction and leadership skills. The need for students in online environments to acquire and use social skills such as cooperative learning skills, group discussion strategies, and conflict resolution skills, that are traditionally included in face-to-face teaching and learning environments is an intrinsic goal of online teaching and learning. A brief historical perspective of the development of online learning programs highlights some of the factors that have influenced the need for including student teams in online learning environments.

Effective Stiffness and Effective Mass of the Double-Walled Carbon Nanotube Sensor

In this study, the effective stiffness of the double-walled carbon nanotube sensor is determined by both the Bubnov–Galerkin method and the finite difference technique. It is shown that in addition to the familiar expression of the effective stiffness of the clamped-free beam, there is an additional term for the double-walled carbon nanotube’s effective stiffness. Additionally, it is demonstrated that there are two effective stiffness expressions, depending on where the load is applied, at the inner tube or at the outer tube. Additionally, effective mass is evaluated in the context of the Galerkin method.

The Unintended, Pernicious Consequences of "Staying the Course" on the United States' No Child Left Behind Policy

The phrase “no child left behind” has become a familiar expression in American education circles and in popular culture. The sentiment implied by these four words is noble. However, the effects of the top-down implementation of the high-stakes testing provisions of the law have been anything but salutary for public school children, teachers, and administrators. This claim is supported by data describing many of the ways in which well-intentioned but desperate educators, from the statehouse to the schoolhouse, have been driven to game the system in ironic defense of the children, teachers, and administrators least equipped to defend themselves. It is argued herein that, instead of reauthorizing the stronger accountability tenet of NCLB, it might do very well to let it fade away.

Performance Management in Dutch Central Government

This article investigates how and to what extent performance indicators in Dutch central government are actually embedded in performance management. In a case study encompassing 12 government organizations, the relevance of the indicators presented is analysed in three stages: (1) with respect to the responsibilities for results intended in performance measurement, (2) with respect to responsibilities actually implied in resource allocation and (3) with respect to responsibilities ultimately to be inferred from governance – planning and control – systems applied. In our research, management control systems appear to be only partially tuned to the performance indicators specified in advance. The familiar expression ‘What you measure is what you get’ is thereby invalidated by all kinds of restrictions imposed on a manager’s actual responsibility for measurement outcomes.

The Equilibrium State

Aqueous geochemists work daily with equations that describe the equilibrium points of chemical reactions among dissolved species, minerals, and gases. To study an individual reaction, a geochemist writes the familiar expression, known as the mass action equation, relating species’ activities to the reaction’s equilibrium constant. In this chapter we carry this type of analysis a step farther by developing expressions that describe the conditions under which not just one but all of the possible reactions in a geochemical system are at equilibrium. We consider a geochemical system comprising at least an aqueous solution in which the species of many elements are dissolved. We generally have some information about the fluid’s bulk composition, perhaps directly because we have analyzed it in the laboratory. The system may include one or more minerals, up to the limit imposed by the phase rule (see Section 3.4), that coexist with and are in equilibrium with the aqueous fluid. The fluid's composition might also be buffered by equilibrium with a gas reservoir (perhaps the atmosphere) that contains one or more gases. The gas buffer is large enough that its composition remains essentially unchanged if gas exsolves from or dissolves into the fluid. How can we express the equilibrium state of such a system? A direct approach would be to write each reaction that could occur among the system’s species, minerals, and gases. To solve for the equilibrium state, we would determine a set of concentrations that simultaneously satisfy the mass action equation corresponding to each possible reaction. The concentrations would also have to add up, together with the mole numbers of any minerals in the system, to give the system’s bulk composition. In other words, the concentrations would also need to satisfy a set of mass balance equations. Such an approach, however, is unnecessarily difficult to carry out. Dissolving even a few elements in water produces many tens of species that need be considered, and complex solutions contain many hundreds of species. Each species represents an independent variable, namely its concentration, in our scheme. For any but the simplest of chemical systems, the problem would contain too many unknown values to be solved conveniently.

Notes on Aratus, Phaenomena

It is characteristic of A. to use words that occur only once in Homer, and such a word is ἄρρητος. In Od. 14. 466 it describes the remark that is better left unspoken, ὅ πέρ τ' ἄρρητον ἄμεινον. But it has the distinction of occurring once also in Hesiod, and this time it is used of men without fame, ῥητοί τ' ἄρρητοί τε Διòς μεγάλοιο ἕκατι (Op. 4). It is clearly this line in Hesiod's proem that A. is echoing in his own, and in the same kind of sense, though, as Martin points out, A. ‘renverse en quelque sorte une expression d'Hésiode’. In the Phaenomena it is Zeus who is always being celebrated by men.The idiom with ⋯⋯ν and negative is used by Plato, Lg. 793 b, οὔτε νόμους δεῖ προσαγορεύειν αὐτ⋯ οὔτε ἄρρητα ⋯⋯ν, and it may have been a familiar expression. But here in A., with the emphatic οὐδέποτε, it does seem rather contrived, and this may account for the fanciful explanation in the scholia that Zeus here represents the air we use every time we speak. The phrasing is certainly designed to give the maximum emphasis to ἄρρητον, which comes in enjambement at the beginning of the second line and is then followed by a strong sense pause. It is tempting, therefore, to suggest that the poet is indulging in a kind of pun on the sound of his own name, which usually has a long α in its first syllable and sometines η in its second: e.g. Call. Epigr. 27. 4 Ἀρήτου σύντονος ⋯γρυπνίη, and Leonidas, A.P. 9. 25. 1 γράμμα τόδ' Ἀρήτοιο δαήμονος. Other Hellenistic poets have contrived puns on the derivation oftheir names: Philodemusin A.P. 5. 115, Meleager in A.P. 12. 165, and Crates in A.P. 11. 218. 4. Closer to A. is the story recorded in the ancient biographical tradition of Antigonus complimenting the poet with the pun εὐδοξóτερον ποιεῖς τòν Eὔδοξον.