Saturday, November 27, 2010

Regression

I couldn't squeeze into my loosest pair of pants. Tailored some new ones. The tailor was nice enough to make another 0.5 inch allowance and he said "做工了一定会再胖"。

This is getting out of hand. So guess what, i sat right down in front of an excel spreadsheet and started keying in weekly data I've collected on my weight and waist length. (yeah, i guess sitting down more isn't going to help one bit...hahaha...)

Anyway, this not-very-robust data was collected usually on a Sunday morning and 32 data points were collected over a 50 weeks period. The differences (50 vs 32) are due to laziness in some weeks and also I'm not crazy (enough) to bring measuring tape and scale on my trips overseas.

Below is a scatter-plot of weight (x-axis) vs. waistlength (y-axis)

What interests me most was that under regression analysis, the R-squared is only 0.191, which loosely translate to "19.2% of waist length variation can be explained by weight"...I've never been good at stats, so this is my understanding. haha. So loosing weight does not necessarily mean I'll start fitting into my old pants?!?

Contrary to my previous belief, I do not put on tremendous amount of weight during Christmas, but during Chinese New Year, my increase in weight is staggering.



So armed with this two piece of data...i dunno what to do next...maybe will start getting a chartist to find where my weight will lend next. Wait, does past weight drives future weight? mmm...or is it random event? Let me do more multi-factor analysis first.

OR...Maybe I should write a book combining random walk theory and weight management. Then launch some self-help/self-loathe group and run huge seminar to tell people, IT IS OK TO GAIN EXCESS WEIGHT, JUST THINK AND YOUR FATS WILL ALL MELT OFF. WILL IT OFF!!! IF YOU ARE NOT LOSING WEIGHT, IT IS BECAUSE YOU ARE NOT THINKING HARD ENOUGH. Gosh, piece of bull.

Ok, enough thinking, I should start doing something about it. But wait, let me read up on it first, there just could be a holy grail tucked away in some books, and with a 'swish and flick', it will all go away.

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