MIRL! Fitbit Stats!

It’s the first Wednesday of June which means it’s time for our monthly linky – Math IS Real Life!!  If you want to see how the linky works, or just want other real world math ideas, check out our Pinterest Board of all the posts so that you can look back and find some great ideas and REAL pictures to use in your classroom!  
If you are linking up, please include the below picture AND a link back to all four of our blogs – feel free to use the 2nd image and the links listed below!
A monthly REAL WORLD math blog link-up hosted by
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I caved.  I bought a FitBit.  I’m always one to try new gadgets…and at least this time I went into it realistically. “It will be cool…but unless it causes me to get a tapeworm, it probably won’t solve my weight loss goals by itself.”
This has proven to be true.
That being said, I am FASCINATED with it and the math I am doing related to it so I thought I’d share!  At this point, I am really only interested in 3 pieces of data…
1.  My sleep patterns.
2.  My daily steps.
3.  My…ahem…weight
So let’s start with sleep…I don’t sleep enough.  I know this.  In fact, I have a sleep ISSUE.  I know I stay up too late and get up too early.  I also know that I wake up too much in the night.  What I didn’t realize is just HOW little sleep I was getting until I got the sleep data from my new little tech friend.  CHECK this out.
Now…one might think this is just a fluke…but I get these SAME results every night–with some variation. One night I had only 136 restless minutes–and got a total of 4 h 22 min of sleep.  NOT ENOUGH!  I thought that maybe the FitBit itself was glitchy, so I asked my friend to track hers for a few nights.  Ready for this?
I know.  That’s what I thought.  So…the first part of my “Math is Real Life” is to look at this data and make some decisions!  Number one, I need to start going to bed earlier to see if getting more hours of sleep can improve my restlessness.  After that experiment–I’ll start messing with other variables.  Math in the real world, right?
So the next “data study” I’ve been doing involves my daily steps.  I know the research out there is to try to get 10,000 steps a day so I have been tracking daily for about two weeks now, and here is a relatively (maybe a little high…) typical work day.
I was feeling pretty good…my lowest work day was about 9,000 and most are in that 11-12,000 range.  Then the weekend hit.
UGH!  How am I going to get my 10,000 steps a day in the summer without working?  Again, I just didn’t realize how sedentary my weekends were until I collected some data.  Now?  Time to make a plan. I’ve decided for the summer to change my daily goal to a weekly goal.  This way I can account for some more sedentary days but also will try to kick myself into at least 3-4 days of more vigorous exercise.  I figure if I tried to average 10,000 steps per day, that would be 70,000 per week–so that is my summer goal.  That way if I only get 5,000 one day, I can make some good choices on the following days to make up for it.
My final piece of data to collect?  My weight.  I have elected to NOT screen shot that–but let’s suffice it to say that my goal is to lose 20 pounds by the first day of school this fall.  Counting 12 weeks, that works out to 1.67 pounds per week.  I know this is maybe a little lofty…and I will definitely need to do more than just walk 70,000 steps per week!  To be continued…
Anyway–I have had a lot of fun checking out my stats and starting to think about what they mean and what I’m going to do about it.  That’s how we are supposed to use data, right?  Anyhoo–I’ll try to give a “FibBit Math Update” later this summer!  Feel free to send positive thoughts my way.  I have the willpower of a turnip.  
Don’t forget to check out all the other great link ups–and set a goal to link YOURSELF up sometime this summer!  Also…don’t forget that NEXT SUNDAY is the next “LOVED THAT LESSON” linky and I’d LOVE to have a bunch of you link up with some posts about lessons you have loved!  Don’t forget–no product plugs…just great lessons that others can learn from and use.

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Meg