Checking

This morning, I learned from Mr. Bryson (inter alia, lately trustee of the National Gallery, a memory which the appropriate web site fails to confirm), that the average person in the US walks around 1.5 miles a week. Now Mr. Bryson, like many journalists and bloggers, is fond of sprinkling his pieces with odd facts, and on this occasion I wondered where he had got this particular fact from. Had he bothered to check? Could he afford a research assistant to do such grunt work? So I thought that I would check.

Bing's first stop is reference 2, from which I learn that '... But the average American only walks about half the recommended amount of 10,000 steps, according to Catrine Tudor-Locke, director of the Walking Behavior Laboratory at Pennington Biomedical Research Center. Last year, she told Live Science that your typical American takes about 5,900 steps a day...', that is to say several miles a day rather than a bit more than a mile a week.

Second stop clearly has to be the people at Pennington, to be found at reference 3. Only in the US of A! A place whose mission statement starts: 'LSU’s Pennington Biomedical Research Center puts science to work for a healthier Louisiana. A world research leader right here in Louisiana, our mission is to discover the triggers of chronic diseases through innovative research that improves human health across the lifespan. At the forefront of medical discovery as it relates to understanding the causes of obesity, diabetes, cardiovascular disease, cancer and dementia, Pennington Biomedical is a campus of Louisiana State University and conducts basic, clinical and population research...'. All of which sounds splendid and I wonder if we have such an institution. Probably not.

From where I quite quickly get to reference 4, which on the basis of a substantial survey comes up with 5,117 steps a day. Not 5,900 for some reason. And then I start to worry about how these people drew their sample, the thought being that people who volunteer to wear a pedometer are apt to be exercise types, skewing the results upwards.

At which point I decide I have spent enough time checking this particular fact, settling for Mr. Bryson's estimate having been a bit on the low side.

Whereas if I was a teacher of, say, a bunch of 12 or 13 year olds, I could set them this checking as an exercise and nip out for a fag while they did it. Job done.

PS: the raw data for reference 4 was collected in 2003 by Harris Interactive, an outfit which looks to be something like our own YouGov, with whom I collaborate on a fortnightly basis.

Reference 1: A walk in the woods - Bill Bryson - 1997. Page 174 of the 'Black Swan' paperback edition.

Reference 2: https://www.attn.com/.

Reference 3: http://www.pbrc.edu/. Of Baton Rouge, in Louisiana. A state with a bad reputation over here for its diversity affairs - or lack of them.

Reference 4: Pedometer-Measured Physical Activity and Health Behaviors in U.S. Adults - Bassett, David R. jr.; Wyatt, Holly R.; Thompson, Helen; Peters, John C.; Hill, James O. - 2010. Open access, but note the very in-English convention for the inclusion of names.

Reference 5: http://harris-interactive.com/.