Happiest States & Fitness Trackers

What are the happiest states? Dangerous Dave talks about a study from Wallethub that says MN is in the top 10 and ND is in the bottom 50%. Plus, fitness trackers and how accurate they are.

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
This, it's deeper in the den with dangerous day. Well,
there's an annual study of the happiest states in the
US for twenty twenty four. This comes from walletop. They
do it every year and with all fifty states. They
rank based on thirty different metrics, including stuff like emotional
and physical health, career satisfaction, unemployment, life expectancy, depression, sleep,

(00:20):
and weather. Ten happy est states in the US. Hawaii
tops a list again, followed by Maryland, New Jersey, Utah, Delaware, Minnesota, Connecticut, Idahoa, Nebraska,
and Massachusetts. Least happy Louisiana, Arkansas, West Virginia, Tennessee, New Mexico, Alaska, Alabama, Oklahoma, Mississippi,
and Kentucky. Right in the middle. Twenty fifth state apparently

(00:41):
isn't happy or unhappy is Arizona. On North Dakota leads
towards the unhappy side, right in the middle at number
twenty seven. So what can we do to be happier? Well,
if summer could last a couple more months, that would help.
Deeper in the two. Don't get too proud of yourself
when you hit ten thousand steps a day. There's a
decent chance. It's more like nine thousand study and fitness

(01:03):
tracking apps said they're not as accurate as you would think,
and that includes counting the number of steps you take
every day. They looked at fitbits, Apple watches, and a
bunch of other brands. Five things they took back from
those devices when they tracked them and how accurate the
results were for each heart rate actually, they said was
pretty good. The real number should be about three percent
higher or lower. It says heart rate variability. There's a

(01:26):
slight variation in the times between heart beats that can
help predict potential health issues, and they found it's pretty
accurate when you're sitting down, but not when you're moving around.
When it comes to sleep tracking, they found fitness trackers
tend to overestimate how long you were sleeping and underestimate
how long it took you to fall asleep. Calories burned
not so great. Some devices underestimated by twenty one percent,

(01:47):
others overestimated by fourteen percent. But you think you burned
one hundred calories, but the round numbers more likely it's
going to be ninety or maybe one twenty five. So
basically it's an average, which isn't bad. Right. Counting steps
awful but not great either. You might think you what
took ten thousand steps, It's more likely to be nine
thousand or eleven thousand, nine percent fewer steps on some

(02:08):
of them, were twelve percent more on some. There's good
news though. In general, they found fitness trackers are more
likely to undercount steps, so if you said ten thousand,
you're more likely to do that. Also, people are more
likely to be conscious of their health and try to
be healthy when they wear fitness trackers. Just so it
doesn't track the number of beers I drink. To me

(02:29):
again for another episode of Deeper in the Den with
Dangerous daved right here.