My Correlation Project and questions

Quantified Self Mood
1

Hi, I am a newbie, I have introduced myself in the following thread (https://forum.quantifiedself.com/thread-introducing-myself--2389)

as I have mentioned in the introduction thread

" had a couple of stressors that seemed to have a big role on my fluctuating mood. I had the iMoodJournal app (http://www.inexika.com/imood) to track my mood. I could only correlate my mood with time and with #hastags that I have given. I have learned that I am going down on fridays (weird huh?) but I never was able to extract why I am down on Fridays. "

in order to have those stressors or wwhatever you call them, I started looking for an app, an easy way to enter the data at least 10 times a day, maybe even more, because my mood is changing in minutes, and I don’t know why it can dramatically change in such a short period. Yes it could be ADHD, but there is more than that

So finally a few days ago, I have found this iPhone application called Reporter (http://www.theverge.com/2014/2/6/5378544/reporter-for-iphone-app-tracks-your-life-nicholas-felton-quantified-self) and started writing my own questions to be asked to me 16 times a day

the SW collects the following parameters itself automatically

Timestamp
Latitude
Longtitude
Weather
Number of Pictures you have taken since last report (I don’t know where and how to correlate this)
Ambient Audio in dB
Number of Steps since last report

those are the questions that the app had by default

What I am doing at that moment (I have disabled that)
What did I learn that day (I have the app ask me before the bed only)
Where am I (like fourquare checkin)
Who am I with (I like that, it gets the people from your contacts)

then I have added my own questions (I will be open)

anxiety about a recent divorce (x wife issues) (numbers from 1-10)
some anger left from last summer (numbers from 1-10)
my relationship with my girlfriend (numbers from 1-10)
my relationship with mom (numbers from 1-10)
self-esteem (numbers from 1-10)
self-confidence (numbers from 1-10)
hopefulness (numbers from 1-10)
how successful do I feel myself at work (believe it or not but, it is fluctuating too) (numbers from 1-10)
Physical Energy (numbers from 1-10)
Overall Anxiety (numbers from 1-10)
Financial Anxiety (numbers from 1-10)
libido (that is of course being effected by others, or have a role on others) (numbers from 1-10)
amount of money in my saving account (numbers from 1-10)
credit card debts (numbers from 1-10)

I also added 3 hobbies and QS itself, 1-10 points depending on how much I did

photography (numbers from 1-10)
videography (numbers from 1-10)
music (numbers from 1-10)
QS (numbers from 1-10)

finally the medication… it is one of the most important parameter, there are some medication that I use “on-demand” , first I had set the answers to be “Yes/No” but since the medication has a half life and side effects regarding the time, I have changed them to numbers as “how many hours ago”

e.g. Concerta has a weird release, supposed to be 3 times in 12 hours, but it doesn’t work that way, having taken stimulants concerta/ritalin, your self confidence may rise a bit in one hour for 15-30 minutes, and then it goes down, for concerta, it is even worse, it causes bad anxiety afternoon probably regarding its weird release periods

Ritalin
Concerta
Xanax
Melatonin

and at the end, I am asking “what had happened since the last report to have those deltas” there has to be something external that might have triggered one of those items to change suddenly, and the change runs within the whole parameters

So, I am doing my best to answer

the numbers 1-10 is not easy to evaluate, I may not be able to spot the right value for the same taste of feeling a week later maybe, so it will effect my correlation.

I thought about pugh matrix, as far as I remember where you only specify 0 + or - , just the deltas without numbers. But I don’t know how to do that, and I will try to stick with 1-10 grades as much as possible.

now here is my question, I am not good in statistics, never used SPSS or any sort of statistics software, I do not know how to correlate the values, I want to export the data with masked fields and will ask your help in interpreting. It doesnt have to be a month of data, I only want to learn how/where to put the data, and what tool to use. I thought of obtaining SPSS, or I might use zenobase,com maybe…

I appreciate your help

2

I’d only use Reporter for questions of the type “how am I feeling right now”, and not “did I do x today”. There are better apps like Moves for keeping track of where you were, and general-purpose apps like rTracker can be used to quickly log arbitrary events such as “took medication x” (incl a timestamp and perhaps location) as they happen.

You can then answer questions like “how much more anxious am I after taking Ritalin, compared to Concerta (excluding weekends and days I was traveling)”. But first you need a decent amount of data :slight_smile:

3

Hi Eric, I have forgot to mention other log sources that I use

fitbit flex
moves
manic time (http://www.manictime.com/)
rescue time (https://www.rescuetime.com/)
BP (manually, once a day or when needed)
weight
BMI
Fat

so I have downloded and looked at rTracker, I liked it, I will see if I can switch to rTracker from Reporter, it looks like I can use it, so you have zenobase in your signature, does that belong to you? or you use it only

4

Yes, I run Zenobase. Don’t have support for rTracker yet, but happy to add that if someone sends me a sample file :slight_smile: