I believe the original goal of AI was to help the stupid and ignorant get access to summary data from authoritative published information. Yet because AI has no sense of reality (fact from fiction) or ethics (right from wrong) we instead get stories told by morons (AI is a moron) to morons. Eg I asked a question and got another answer ...
Friday 1 November 2024
Everything wrong with Ai in one post
Tuesday 20 August 2024
understanding INR range and variation using statistics
I've been working with managing my INR for some 14 years now (so, not really long), but as well I've helped a few others along the path of being able to self manage. This has been not only helpful for them, but a great learning experience for me too. One of the things I've had to do is teach an understanding of how to use basic statistics to help understand things. Things like the data we have about our INR. Lets look at this set of data, remember, these are daily measurements:
This person was just starting their warfarin therapy and we were working out the optimal dose required for them. We had to make some adjustments but we ended up on 9.5mg daily. You can see from the above that there are some ups and downs;
- for the most part we've been at or above 2
- we've kept times above 3 small (being even as high as 4 isn't really significant)
I'm pretty sure most people are comfortable with average, but alone, average isn't helpful, you need its good mate the Standard Deviation. Lets go with an example: You know that the average height of 16 year old boys is 173.5cm. You have a boy from a class who's 185cm. So the question is "is he very tall or not really unexpectedly so"?
Intuitively we know that the answer is no, because we have experience with children. But if we also find out that the standard deviation is 7.4cm we know that anything between 166.1cm and 180.9cm is a totally expectable result. We know this because that is what Standard Deviation (SD) is designed to measure. Below is a curve which is called a "Normal Distribution", people who have been working in statistics for years know this curve well.
It shows us that 68.2% of people (in this case, but its also more generally "of measurements") will fit between -1 SD and +1 SD (we use the lower case for Greek symbol sigma σ to represent SD which you'll see on the bottom axis of that graph of the Normal Curve).
So just like we know that most boys age 16 are between 166.1cm and 180.9cm we can use the SD to work out how much variation that person has from "the population". The SD for the data in that bar chart above is 0.41, which means that any variation we see where the INR is between 2.16 and 2.98 is entirely normal for this person. Note: we don't know about you because we don't have your data.
Next, looking at this we can see that quite a portion (about a quarter of all measurements) fall within 2 SD either side of the average (or μ) which means INR readings of 1.75 through to 3.39 are to be expected, but just not often. Also 1.34 through to 3.8 may come up (however rarely) and this would be statistically rare, but not impossible.
So how does this help us manage our INR?
It helps to know that if your regularly and reliably taking your regular dose and if you're regularly seeing your INR within 1SD of the average then you shouldn't really make any changes in your dose. Keep your dose consistent and you can then rely on the statistics to understand what is normal for you.
Looking back at the graph of INR we also see something else ... from measurement to measurement we typically don't see that much change. Sure there are a couple where "day to day" we saw substantial on the 1st of August where INR fell from 3.3, through 2.7 (next day) down to 2.3. This was the result of some changes; dose was dropped to 8.5 and it fell fairly quickly but as you see didn't drop below 2.1. The INR then ranged back towards the average within a week.
The approach we should have taken was "keep a steady hand on the tiller" combined with waiting for a few more readings. However ...
As a good (budding) statistician, if you do see a reading which is outside of the 1SD range and you know that nothing has changed (no new foods, no binging on grapefruit, no binging on greens) then you should expect it to gradually change back towards the average. Unless something has changed and you don't know it. If it stays higher then you know "something has changed" and investigation is warranted into what.
So, please do make friends with both average and SD, incorporate that into your spreadsheet as well as using regular weekly measurements. Occasional mid week samples "just to know" are also often helpful, but as you can see from both the historical experience behind Average and SD, combined with regular dose and weekly readings you can be in INR range in the high 80% of the time.
To get into the 90's you just need a few more strategies ... but that's for another post.
Best Wishes
Sunday 11 August 2024
The Case evolution of early Seiko Divers
Now, this is undertaken with "homage" watches, but I've seen quite an amount of comparisons between the "homage" and the original to be satisfied that they are pretty close to the original. Indeed from what I've seen so close that even experts are satisfied and are frustrated that "Seiko didn't do this"
So, the order of release dates of these watches is this
- 62MAS
- 6105-8000
- 6105-8101
My view is that this presentation hides what's happened. This is exacerbated by most people only looking at YouTube and combined with the relative naivety of what amounts to a large fresh watch enthusiast audience (coming into watches post-COVID).
First off, I want to remind readers that none of these in the Original Seiko had a screw-down crown. The 8xxx cases had a sort of locking crown and the MAS was just relying on its o-rings to seal. This point is not insignificant in watches that will need
- reasonably frequent time setting (because they aren't quartz and so it was likely to have worse accuracy than 30 seconds per day (that's around 3.5 minutes per week)
- date needs to be reset about 6 times per year.
Shaping, sculpting and polishing is beautiful and as you can imagine results in a rather significant weight reduction.
Friday 9 August 2024
Seestern 62MAS thoughts (and review?)
I think highly of this watch not least because of the Seiko heritage that it is paying tribute to, but because it is a very affordable, very well made watch that I can wear as a daily use watch. So this is written with something like 3 weeks of using it as an exclusive daily wear.
So I intend this to be a gloves off "nobody pays me to write" assessment of this watch.
Bottom line
Seestern have enabled enthusiasts of the 62MAS to have access to a modern version of the watch which is much closer to the original than Seiko's reissues. It does so in a way that modernises critical things (like the movement, 20mm lug width, sapphire crystal) and enables us to have affordable reliable access to a piece of history. Perfect, well except for the high polished bezel and, well the larger size of the bezel being a distraction from the watch's proportions. This is more evident with both watches in hand than even this photograph:
That aside it is indeed a good match for the MAS. Having had both in my hand at the same time I can say that I prefer the bezel and crystal of the Seiko MAS by a mile (and its not subtle).
I like the Seestern a lot but I'm probably going to go back to my Seiko SRPE as my daily wear because of the things I've discovered along the way which I'll discuss here. I may bring it out more in Summer. Unlike my Addiesdives Willard however I'm not going to be selling this watch (I have a small collection with a simple rule of: one in = one out.
Discussion
Briefly the 62MAS marks Seiko's first foray into making a watch aimed at professional and serious amateur divers. I recommend that if you haven't, you look over at my earlier blog post here, which at the very least which serves as both a good introduction to my initial thoughts. There I also give the specs and a link to Fratello Watches post on the Seiko 62MAS which I will again source a portion of an image.
The dial and the importance of the dial on a diver as being highly legible in all (and adverse) conditions. Key to reading a watch is orienting the dial so that not only is the 12 O'Clock clear but making the quarters of the dial immediately recognisable increases the accuracy of knowing where the hands point to by reducing the time to be clear about is it on the 9 or on the 10
Seiko knew that and made the markers on these positions reasonably visibly different. This is my first beef with the Seestern where they aren't. Actually as an aside my second beef with the Seestern is the visibly bigger bezel dial ring and it being that shitty shiny "make my watch look like a plastic toy" high polish ceramic. Most of the time it doesn't look black... Compare the thickness here where the font struggles to fit into the older one ... The extra thickness makes the bezel dial so much more 'present' on the watch.
- tapering the lume ever so slightly towards the inner dial
- making them smaller than the quarter markers
the taper is far too subtle and the ratio of length to width is also far too subtle. Forgive the colour temperature differences, that's down to lighting on my photograph.
Lets look at them all in better (bigger) detail
so at significant magnification the differences are clearer ... handy for the myopic who aren't wearing their glasses ... but not so much in a dive or dim lit situation.Its important to remember that this is of course a very early Dive Watch, and Seiko was still learning the best design language for Divers watches. To me this reached peak form in the 7000 series (like the SKX007) where dials and hands evolved to produce what to me is the pinnacle of diver dials. I don't have one of those, but I do have my SRPE which is very close visually to that series. A picture from my above mentioned earlier blog post shows that layout advantage clearly.
Almost instantly you can see the design cues guiding your eye to the hand positions clearly; markers are somehow less cluttered, quarters are distinguished from the others resulting in less time is needed to recognise the time) and so a quick glance is all that's needed. In terms of design language, the later watch has evolved into a clear 12, dashes on the quarters and dots between them. So at a glance you can see is the hand next to a Dash, between two Dots or between Dash Dot / Dot Dash.
So despite being almost exactly the same size of face the MAS, the Seestern ends up looking cluttered and cramped while the more modern dial looks open and clear.
For me this lack of legibility is a detraction, I wish they'd striven to make the small changes err towards being clearer (instead of less clear).
I like that that bezel on the Seestern is proud of the watch case; both in height and diameter. This makes it easy to grip and turn (as its intended to be); however this has an implication for wearing and long sleeves where it catches a lot.
Wearing the MAS
As I mentioned in the other post watch thickness is almost identical, with only the crystal protruding a bit more to make the watches differ in thickness. So the grip style on the bezel, and the fact that it stands a little proud, means that sleeves and cuffs in particular snag on it. Far less of a problem with the SRPE
or indeed a more modern Seiko diver which has usually got a shape that will allow the watch to deflect the cuffs of shirts up and over it.
(image sourced from Reddit)
Accordingly the bezel gets caught on sleeve which is annoying, so this feels like its going to be more of a summer watch to me. However I'm still wearing it a day later so ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
Lastly we come to the fact that now most divers (not the Seiko 62MAS, nor the Willard however) now have a screw down crown. Because its a mechanical watch its not going to be as accurate as a Quartz watch is, which means you'll probably be unscrewing that to be setting the time weekly (if we accept that its going to be something like 5 minutes a week out) or if you aren't wearing it daily every time you need to put it on. In the past my (still to this day) favourite daily diver was my Sports 100 from 1979 (which I bought in 1983 or so)
As you can see:
- its very slim
- its very light (less than 63g the Seestern was 66g)
- the bezel allows finger grip but shirt slip
Conclusions
Basically the Seestern MAS deserves to be a daily wear watch (the disrespectful will use the term "beater") because:
- its very economically priced (like not far from a Casio Duro)
- it has a robust and reliable NH35 movement in it (so, not unlike that in my SRPE
I'm very pleased to have this watch in my box and I hope that come summer it'll see more time than my SRPE does ...
I'll update this as I discover more. Update 1