Dr. Howard Smith Oncall

Vidcast:  https://youtu.be/nWqioZcv0VA Is your Fitbit or your Facebook page better at predicting your state of health?  Computer scientists at the University of Notre Dame now say that the strength of your social network is better than fitness wearables at predicting just how health you are.   The investigators collected social info, Fitbit data, and a general health history from nearly 700 Notre Dame freshmen.  They developed an algorithm to quantitate the robustness of students’ friendships, and they used the wearables to  provide cardiac, exercise intensity, and sleep data.  A wellness survey permitted assessment of the students’ physical and psychological wellbeing. It turns out that both are important, and adding the social network data significantly improves the ability of the wearable data alone to predict your state of wellness or otherwise.  The added social data improved predictability of happiness by 65%, of a positive attitude by 55%, and of stress by 38%. So keeping healthy involves more that cyc