Wednesday, December 27, 2006

It's All In The Data

Temperature at departure = 34° F (1° C)

My family is very happy that I became so serious about bike commuting this last year. Finally, they've got something they can use when they buy presents for me; before they were at a loss. Thus, I reaped a bunch of cycling stuff for Christmas: Bright florescent yellow jacket with reflective stripes, new gloves, balaclava, mega-tool and bike computer to name a few.

Before I opened the bike computer I had never really thought I'd want one. Once open, I couldn't wait to get it installed and tested out. It's very cool. Once I made it to the office I set up a new data base to track the data for each trip. I was interested to see that I'd miscalculated the distance to the office; I thought it was right at 5 miles but it turns out to be 5.647 miles. Guess my spreadsheet tracking the last 6 months is off by a mile a day. I was, however, very close on my estimate of average speed -- I guessed 12 MPH and today's average was 12.3.

Biking and data mining, gotta love it.

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