Definition Percentage Composition

Posted onNovember 02, 2011 - 5:22 am by Admin | 0 Comments

So, I’ve owned this scale for a little over two weeks now and have been consistently tracking my results at the times suggested within the user’s manual… “To receive the most accurate weight measurement, please weigh yourself first thing when you get up in the morning” and “To receive the most accurate body fat, etc. measurement, please weigh yourself in the evening, before eating.”

Having followed this advice, in my initial review I felt that my measurements day-to-day were very consistent, but not that accurate in regards to body composition. Well, with a little help from the Amazon user community, I retract any doubt I once had in this product.

I initially took issue with the body composition measurements not being comparable with those I had received using a hand-held body composition tool at my local LA Fitness. However, after changing the scale setting from “Athletic Male” to just “Male”, as suggested by another user, the measurements were spot-on (… maybe I’m not an athlete after all). So, my advice to those purchasing this scale, even if you meet the criteria specified in the manual and “exercise +10 hours of strenuous/aerobic a week”… try both settings. (I’m still curious as to how that setting influences the calculations)

And as for my doubt regarding all of the percentages not adding up to 100% (body fat, total body water, and muscle mass)… that’s apparently a misguided expectation on my part. Once again, another user pointed out to me that there’s going to be some overlap in the body composition percentages using this type of measuring instrument. By definition, muscle is part water. So from what I understand, water might be counted both in the muscle mass percentage as well as in the total body water percentage, causing the sum of all the percentages to be greater than 100%. Now, if I was a little loose in my explanation there, it’s because I don’t fully understand it… but a quick search on Google proved that this is in fact the case, and that I should have paid closer attention in Health class.

In conclusion, for the money, you simply can’t beat this scale – intuitive set-up (well, maybe not that one setting…), awesome build quality (glass-top, not rubber or plastic like you may think from the pictures), as cool-looking as a scale can be, and most importantly, highly consistent results that are as accurate as can be expected from such a device. Meaning, I’m certain there are more accurate means of determining weight and body composition – but they aren’t nearly as practical or affordable as this solution. Excellent deal!

I hope this was helpful, feel free to drop comments or questions.

Liberal economics writers Ryan Chittum, Kevin Drum, and Matt O’Brien continue to find fault with my posts (here, here and here) on income inequality. Let’s boil it down to two big issues:

1. Is income growth becoming more unequal? Chittum, Drum, and O’Brien (CDO) say I have misused the work of economist Robert Gordon. Hey, I report, you decide. Here’s Gordon in his own words from his own 2009 paper:

The rise of American inequality has been exaggerated in magnitude, and its impact is now largely in the past. … Not only has the increase of inequality been exaggerated, but it has ceased. The excess growth of mean relative to median income reversed itself after 2000. The income shares of the top one percent and of CEOs, which had exploded before 2000, went down and back up with stock market gyrations between 2000 and 2006 but did not rise on balance. … Other measures suggest that the rise of inequality ceased well before the year 2000.

So get a time machine, Occupy Wall Street! What’s more, there’s evidence that since 2007 the share of income grabbed by the top 1 percent and top 0.1 percent—using  income inequality data that CDO prefer—has collapsed.

Are U.S. incomes more unequal today than they were a generation ago? Sure—as is true of advanced economies generally—but not to the extent CDO argue when you factor differing inflation rates between income groups and household composition.

2. Has the middle class stagnated during the past 30 years? I’ve pointed to a pair of Fed studies that show middle-class wages and incomes rising since the 1970s. But CDO disqualify those studies mainly because liberal economist Jared Bernstein says they’re no good. If only there was some economist CDO respected who could back up my claims. Wait, Robert Gordon does! Here is a bit from an email Gordon sent me in 2007:

The correct statement is that correcting the upward bias of the official [consumer price index] adds more than 1 percent per year to official estimates of the growth in median and mean wages. Cumulatively since 1977, my best estimate of the upward bias in the CPI cumulates to 38 percent between 1977 and 2006. Thus if someone came along and said the male median wage adjusted for CPI inflation has been stagnant since 1977, I would translate this into a true 38 percent increase.

And don’t forget brand-new research from University of Chicago’s Bruce Meyer and Notre Dame’s James Sullivan who find that “median income and consumption both rose by more than 50 percent in real terms between 1980 and 2009.”

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