I’m using Garmin Connect to track total time exercised along with time in each discipline. It is reporting in hours. Suddenly it is reporting hours to 4 significant digits on total time and bike time, and more than can be resolved on my screen for run time and swim time. I’ve searched their forums and it is not addressed. Is anyone seeing this and has anyone figured out how to adjust it?
Whats wrong with extra significant digits?
More accurate data is better right?
I have not used GC for that before, so it got me curious? Is this on the mobile app or web app? And, where exactly in the respective app are you going for the info?
I found a view under Reports on the web that lists summary statistics by activity and by year/month/week for whatever duration looking back. That reports time in h:mm:ss. But, it looks totally fine on the browser. I could not find a comparable view on the iOS mobile app.
It’s a feature of the desktop version that is not obvious. You can go to goals and then create a widget that tracks pretty much anything you can think of. I have it set to show percentage of time spent in each discipline to make sure that I’m training reasonably consistently.
I’ve done this for several years and it has always shown whole numbers. For the first 5 months of this year it showed whole numbers. Now it is showing 4 digits (110.0525) for 2 of the widgets and 15 digits (26.874166666666667) for 2 of the others.
The feature doesn’t appear in the mobile app. The home computer is running Windows 10 and Edge, the work computer is running NT and IE 11. Both show the same thing.
Not a show stopper, just annoying.
I’m trying to remember significant digit rules from freshman engineering, but I can’t imagine that gps data can be significantly past .1, if it can even get that far.
I HATED significant digits in my engineering classes. I understand them. And I hate them. I cannot explain the irrational hate. But it is real.
Whats wrong with extra significant digits?
More accurate data is better right?
actually not, one has to remember that it is likely the data is at 1 second per data point, that is the best you can do, so too many digits is just wasted space…so for instance at 60 k/h you are doing about 17 m/sec or 0.017km, so in reality it is likely with regular errors that the best you can hope for is about +/-0.02km/h in speed increments meaning 60.0 +/- 0.02 km/h so digits past that are pretty much useless. Even at 30 km/h it is at best +/- 0.01 km/h. So added digits are just taking up space and are not useful or significant.