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jampekkayesterday at 3:37 PM1 replyview on HN

I don't understand what you mean by that.

Precision (inverse of variance) of estimate of mean increases directly proportional to number of samples (given some assumptions that very likely hold here). If you have measurement standard deviation of say 10 bpm, with 100 measurements you have mean estimate standard deviation of 10/sqrt(100) = 1 bpm.


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gjulianmyesterday at 4:05 PM

> of estimate of mean

But you can't really assume that the estimate of the mean represents the real value. For example, if the sensor is equally likely to show 80 or 81 BPM when the real heartrate is 80.7, the mean estimator will be biased.

> with 100 measurements

Also, wearables aren't taking 100 measurements of the BPM at a given point in time. I think the highest frequency they usually have is 1 second measurement interval. So they don't really have a lot of measurements for each point in time.

> mean estimate standard deviation

That's the standard deviation of the mean of the values. Doesn't imply that the standard deviation of the values themselves will go to zero.

> I don't understand what you mean by that.

That as a rule of thumb, you should not assume that repeating measurements will give you more precision than what the tool can offer. E.g., trying to measure down to milimeters with a ruler that has only 1cm marks will not really work well.

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