Archive for category Wellness
“Welcome, Body Mass seeker”
Posted by mark in Uncategorized, Wellness on February 27, 2011
This is the greeting from Steve Halls, MD, at his web weight-calculator. After a fair amount of searching on the internet, I found this site on body-mass the easiest to use and informative. However, I cannot speak on its accuracy. I will only admit that it provided far less scary news (and realistic, I feel) about my own weight than other websites giving advice on this vital subject.
According to the “updated hall.md v2” standards, I am “marginally overweight” at the 53rd percentile of other American males at my age and height. As we like to say in Minnesota, this could be worse, so it’s not so bad.
Discussing what should be the “ideal” weight would take up a great deal of time and energy: Never mind that. What I want to do is focus on monitoring weight. For example, I just completed the pictured outlier-detecting run-chart* on my 20 weighings** thus far this year. Notice that none of the results fall outside of the 95 percent confidence limits.
Even so, after I penciled in my number for the highlighted point, my wife hassled me a bit about going overweight when she saw . I predicted that she would see a regression to the mean, which didn’t impress her one bit. Nevertheless, the value of being patient by charting data over a period of time can be seen in this instance – it vindicates me not reacting to one result.
Coincidentally, our contract trainer Doug Hubbell came to Minneapolis for our new Advanced Formulations workshop. He is the author of a handbook for managers seeking quality improvement (Managing for Profits – to be published soon). Doug is a plain-talking straight-shooter who rifles in on what’s needed to stop chronic manufacturing waste. Charting is a powerful part of his arsenal of quality tools. His reaction to me mentioning my monitoring of weight was “I hope you do not expect this chart to help you lose pounds.” Naturally I wouldn’t admit to that, but, honestly, it did cross my (hopeful!) mind. However, I am mainly just trying to track a very gradual increase of about 1 pound per year since my high-school graduation, when I was in the best shape of my life.
The battle against the bulge continues…
*Using Design-Expert® software’s diagnostics tools. I focused on a chart that deletes each point before calculating its deviation in terms of standard deviation, which makes it more sensitive to statistical outliers. For details, see this Wikipedia entry on Studentized residual (it explains internal and external methods).
**Done with a new bathroom scale that I really like – this Precision Digital model by EatSmart.
Grade A for long-term health prognosis
I took a high-school classmate out to lunch today for his birthday. Now in his late 50s, my friend has aged well – evidently as healthy as can be. Being that he graduated 6th in our class, my buddy’s exceptional fitness of body and mind fits a profile of well-being that’s characteristic of individuals who excelled academically, according to this report by the New York Times. In a nutshell, a long-term longitudinal study of over 10,000 aging students found that, by their early 60s, those near the top of their class were half as likely to report declines in health than their academically-inferior peers. It seems that the studs for studying end up being a lot heartier than the partyers.
“Academic performance is strongly linked to health in later life.”
– Pamela Herd, associate professor of public affairs and sociology at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and study-author of Education and Health in Late-life among High School Graduates
Happy holidays!
The recent collapse of our Hubert H. Hump-free (ha ha) Metrodome makes it seem like we Minnesotans must be completely deflated (pun intended) from the extraordinary snowfall this month. However, there is an upside to this weather – excellent cross-country skiing conditions. As you can see, this has brightened up my disposition. I like nothing better than a ski through the woods near my home in Stillwater, where I often find myself all alone except for a startled deer — I almost literally ran across a doe (the female ungulate, not a design-of-experiment ) yesterday, for example.
Being in good spirits myself, I wish the same for you this holiday season. Enjoy!
“He gives his harness bells a shake
To ask if there is some mistake.
The only other sound’s the sweep
Of easy wind and downy flake.
The woods are lovely, dark and deep.
But I have promises to keep,
And miles to go before I sleep.
And miles to go before I sleep.”
– Excerpt from “Stopping By Woods on a Snowy Evening” by Robert Frost
PS. The shot from ground-level provides the perspective of one of our indigenous snow fleas, which I often see in late winter when it warms up a bit. It’s fun to watch them jump around at random.
Pigging out in Italy – a 30-meter pork roast
Posted by mark in Uncategorized, Wellness on November 21, 2010
We are gathering quantities of food for a Thanksgiving feast at the Anderson home this Thursday. As my stomach rumbles* in anticipation, my thoughts turn to another great feast that I saw prepared last summer in Bergamo, Italy.** There they prepared pork (or porchetta, as they say), rather than the turkey we prefer in the New World. What made this Bergamo barbecue so singular was the way the cooked their pigs – sewn together into a 30 meter roast! See the results in this video I took (produced by my daughter Emily).
A meter or two of this porchetta would be the perfect warm up for our Thanksgiving banquet. I wonder what these Italians would do to dress up a turkey. They sure know how to create a spectacle!
*In medical terms known as “borborygmi” – a normal symptom of hunger.
**See this report
Brain-bending thoughts on a coffee experiment
Posted by mark in design of experiments, Uncategorized, Wellness on October 24, 2010
The Stat-Ease training center here at our world headquarters in Minneapolis features a wonderful single-cup brewing system that you can see demoed here. When we are not holding a workshop, I sometimes sneak in to steal a cup late in the day. By then I am reaching my limit, so I brew a “half-calf” at the half-cup setting. Being a chemical engineer, I calculate that, in this case, half of half makes a whole, that is, coffee with the normal concentration of caffeine. Does that make sense?
Making a tasty and effective cup of coffee is a huge deal for knowledge workers who need to keep their heads in gear from start to finish of every single day. One of our workshop students, a PhD, has been picking my brain about testing coffee blends on her staff of scientists. She proposes to do a mixture design such as I did on varying types of beers (see Mixture Design Brews Up New Beer Cocktail—Black & Blue Moon).
Obviously overall liking on a sensory basis should be first and foremost for such an experiment on coffee – a 5 to 9-point scale works well for this.* However, the tricky part is assessing the impact of coffee for accelerating information processing and general problem-solving, which I hypothesize depends on level of caffeine. I wonder if an online “brain training” service, such as this one developed by neuroscientists at Stanford and UCSF, might provide a valid measure.
The down side of doing a proper test on whether coffee improves cognitive skills will be the necessity of reverting to the base line, that is, every morning getting up and trying to function without the first cup.
“A mathematician is a machine for turning coffee into theorems.”
— Alfréd Rényi
*Turn your volume down (to not hear the advert) and see this primer on sensory evaluation by S-Cool– a UK educational site for teenagers.
Opportunistic eating a problem for new college students
A study recently published online by the Journal of Adolescent Health concludes that female (but not male!) students in dorms with dining halls gained significantly more weight than those who were forced to go out to eat. The lead author, Kandice Kapinos (University of Michigan), took advantage of the practice of colleges to randomly assign dorm rooms. Specifically, she and her study team examined the weight gain of 388 freshmen at Marquette University. (See a few more details in this press release.).However, they relied on self-reporting rather than direct observation and measurement, which creates some doubt about the validity of their conclusions. After all, people have been known to fudge about their weight. 😉
Nevertheless, based on observation of three daughters and two sons who went off to college, I believe that Kapinos et al are really on to something. This was sealed in my mind from the observation of my youngest girl, who soon will start her third year in a biochemistry program. She said it really is very simple – the female students hang around the dorm dining hall for social reasons, during which times they naturally munch on stuff and pack on the pounds. I think for the good of their students it would be wise of schools not to put cafeterias in the dorms.
“I think perhaps that women are a little more socially oriented at college, and one social thing they engage in might be, ‘Let’s go get a snack,’ Men may not tend to do that as much.”
— Wayne Westcott, Senior Fitness Executive for the YMCA in Quincy, Massachusetts
By the way, putting on weight after going away to college — the proverbial “freshman 15” – is bound to happen, I think; and for both men and women. I gained 15 pounds after moving into a dorm at Michigan State University. It had a dining hall in the building. However, I’ll bet I’d have added weight just the same even if the meals were served elsewhere on campus.
PB&J please, but hold the jelly (and margarine) and put it on toast – a mixture design combined with a categorical factor
Posted by mark in design of experiments, Uncategorized, Wellness on May 27, 2010
My colleague Pat Whitcomb just completed the first teach of Advanced Formulations: Combining Mixture & Process Variables. It inspired me to develop a virtual experiment for optimizing my perfect peanut butter and jelly (PB&J) sandwich. This was a staple for me and my six siblings when we were growing up. Unfortunately, so far as I was concerned, my mother generously slathered margarine on the bread (always white in those days – no whole grains) and then thick layers of peanut butter and jelly (always grape). As you see* in the response surfaces for overall liking [ 🙁 1-9 🙂 ], I prefer that none of the mixture ingredients (A: Peanut butter, B: Margarine, C: Jelly) be mixed, and I like the bread toasted. This analysis was produced using the Combined design tab from Design-Expert® software version 8 released by Stat-Ease earlier this year. I’d be happy to provide the data set, especially for anyone that may be hosting me for a PB&J dinner party. 😉
*Click to enlarge the plots so you can see the legend, etc.
Two-level factorial experimentation might make music for my ears
Posted by mark in design of experiments, Uncategorized, Wellness on May 9, 2010
I am a fan of classical music – it soothes my mind and lifts my spirits. Maybe I’m deluded, but I swear there’s a Mozart effect* on my brain. However, a big monkey wrench comes flying in on my blissful state when my stereo speaker (always only one of the two) suddenly goes into a hissy fit. I’ve tried a number of things on a hit-or-miss basis and failed to find the culprit. At this point I think it’s most likely the receiver itself – a Yamaha RX496. However, before spending the money to replace it, I’d like to rule out a number of other factors:
- Speaker set: A vs B
- Speaker wire: Thin vs Thick.
- Source: CD vs FM-Radio
- Speaker: Left vs Right.
It’s very possible that an interaction of two or more factors may be causing the problem, so to cover all bases I need to do all 16 possible combinations (2^4). But, aside from the work this involves for all the switching around of parts and settings, I am stymied by the failure being so sporadic.
Anyways, I feel better now having vented this to my blog while listening to some soothing Sunday choir music by the Dale Warland Singers on the local classical radio station. I’m taking no chances: It’s playing on my backup Panasonic SA-EN25 bookshelf system.
*Vastly over-rated according to this report by the Skeptic’s Dictionary.
Apples and oranges comparison of diets?
Posted by mark in science, Uncategorized, Wellness on January 21, 2010
While exercising on my elliptical machine this morning watching ABC’s Good Morning America the show captured my attention with a report that Weight Watchers (“WW”) this week filed a lawsuit against one of its top competitors, Jenny Craig (“JC”). The dispute stems from a claim by JC that their clients lost, on average, over twice as much weight as those on the largest weight loss program. WW alleges that this claim is deceptive due it comparing a study by JC done this year versus one done by WW 10 years ago. According to this news release by Weight Watchers the complaint states that generally accepted standards of biomedical research require Jenny Craig to compare the two current offerings of both companies through a head-to-head randomized clinical trial.
“You can’t compare studies that were done in different locations at different times using different groups of people.”
– Louis Aronne, M.D, New York Presbyterian Hospital weight loss expert and author of Eat This, Not That
Although the judge has put a temporary restraining order against their offending ad, I wouldn’t rule out the JC claim prima facie. After all, as Smartmoney Magazine writer Angie Marek stated in her column on The Skinny on Big, Fat Diet Programs “the science on most of these plans is hardly conclusive, since most of the research has been paid for by the diet companies themselves.” In fact, I predict that this case will keep at least two statisticians fat and sassy as expert witnesses (one on each side of this tug-of-war).
Pushing the limits on alcohol levels for holiday cheer – higher the better (?)
Posted by mark in Uncategorized, Wellness on December 24, 2009
Just in time for holiday gift-givers to the guy who already owns everything, Boston Beer Company (BBC) — brewer of Sam Adams lager — announced this year that they’d achieved new heights for alcohol content – over 25 percent by volume. Alcohol levels traditionally have been capped at the 14% level due to natural limits of the yeast that drive fermentation. However, the beer boffins at BBC applied their wits to the zymurgy and came up with “Utopia,” which can be purchased at $599.99 a mini-kettle via this internet purveyor (warning: it’s banned in 13 states!). Otherwise you can await the next batch of ten thousand bottles or so of this potent beer to emerge in two years from the 15-year aging cycle.*
Perhaps this holiday season you may restrict yourself to tamer drinks than high-alcohol beer, such as the traditional eggnog — a “sweetened dairy-based beverage made with milk, cream, sugar, beaten eggs (which gives it a frothy texture), and flavored with ground cinnamon” (according to Wikipedia). However, my plans to pick up our annual eggnog after Thanksgiving were dashed after listening to a recent radio broadcast of NPR’s Science Friday by Ira Flatow. They warned about people (like me) risking salmonella-induced food poisoning by milking their ‘nog clear through Christmas. The show posted this video reporting results from microbiologist Vince Fischetti on his challenge tests** in a lab at the Rockefeller University (RU). I’ve seen these at food clients of Stat-Ease and they gross me out, so I know the end result of dosing up a dairy product with spoilage organisms and pathogens cannot be pretty. Fischetti compared the results after one month of storing a spiked eggnog made by a traditional RU recipe (equal parts bourbon and rum to a 20 % alcohol level) versus one purchased commercially (no alcohol). See the outcome by watching the video – it may encourage you to keep a bottle of spirits on hand. (I’ve got a supply of tequila – just in case.) Being a devotee of DOE, I must say that Fischetti’s findings appear to be based only on sample-size 1. But to his credit, he expresses the desire for grant money leading to more definitive studies.
So whether you hoist a beer or a ‘cheered-up’ glass of eggnog to give your seasonal salute to your friends and family, here’s hoping you all a happy holiday!
*Source for news about high-alcohol beer: 11/30/09 article by Russell Contreras of the Associated Press, seen here as published by the Huffington Post.
** For all the gory details see this posting of Microbiological Challenge Testing by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT). The “Phoenix” phenomenon is particularly worrying (lethal bugs rising from the ashes of sterilization).