Introduction to amassing knowledge
Whether or not we admire it or not, all the pieces we do in our day by day lives is measurable by some metric. Subsequently, knowledge could possibly be collected on each side of our day by day lives. The appearance of recent expertise in day-to-day life has meant that there was a mammoth enhance within the quantity of this sort of knowledge being generated. In lots of instances, this sort of knowledge has made large adjustments in the way in which we take into consideration and stay our lives. Not solely has this made our lives higher however has allowed for main developments in areas similar to human habits, conservationism, city design, and public transport.
Subsequently, I assumed it was moderately becoming within the spirit of this to make use of knowledge to actually discover some features of my life. I set myself two small challenges:
1. The primary of which was to discover among the knowledge that was accessible to me that has been collected by my interactions with expertise. All made attainable due to Article 15 of GDPR, which provides people the appropriate to request a replica of any of their private knowledge that are being ‘processed’.
2. Secondly, to carry out some very fundamental evaluation of this knowledge to search out some enjoyable, fascinating, or helpful insights into my life.
The primary of those missions was to search out simply among the knowledge that has already been generated for me. In a short time I realised it was obvious that there have been reams of various factors that I may request entry to and obtain, similar to:
- Fb Information – together with posts or photographs that I’ve shared, photographs I’m tagged in, posts I’ve favored, and teams I belong to amongst a complete host of different issues.
- Instagram Information – which posts I’ve favored or commented on, who I’ve adopted and who follows me, and what messages I’ve despatched.
- Google knowledge – my Google promoting profile (permitting a peek into how I’m seen on-line), areas that I’ve visited (the primary of which I may discover was from 2011), and a full log of all of the YouTube movies I’ve watched.
- Spotify knowledge – all my listening habits, how lengthy I spent listening to numerous tracks, at what time, and on what day.
- Apple Well being Information – Steps and distance walked or run (from cell phone sensors), any related Apple Watch knowledge (BPM, temperature, and so on.), and even mobility knowledge about how ‘nicely’ I stroll.
This isn’t an exhaustive record simply probably among the platforms which are most generally used throughout the globe. The variety of totally different knowledge sources is prone to be infinite and can solely develop with time. Nevertheless, for these functions, I made a decision to take a look at what I may discover out about my life from Spotify and Apple Well being knowledge.
The Highlights
For the reason that tenth of November 2015 I’ve walked at the very least 15,340km or 20,577,340 steps. That is roughly equal to strolling from Cardiff to Queensland, Australia.
Climbed 44,471 flights of stairs, in accordance with Apple Well being that is one flight is price 10ft. So aggregated (in accordance with Apple’s web site) that is 135km or the identical as 161 and a half Burj Khalifa’s.
Within the time interval thirteenth February 2021 to thirteenth February 2022, I’ve listened to 55, 537 minutes of music or audio on Spotify. In comparison with the Spotify annual reported quantities of 42,875 minutes and 25,6440 minutes within the calendar years 2021 and 2020. A YoY enhance of 67.2% and 29.53% respectively.
On common listened to Spotify essentially the most on a Thursday and listened to essentially the most songs in February 2021.
Another fast stats:
- Most songs on common have been listened to at 19:00
- Common variety of songs listened to day by day – 196
- Listened to 2609 totally different artists
- Listened to 5322 totally different tracks
Highlighted Graphs

Fig 1. Bar Chart exhibiting the variety of steps I’ve taken per yr. Information from www.trovalo.io
Fig 2. Whole variety of songs listened to on Spotify by day of the week.. Information from www.trovalo.io
Fig 3. Most variety of songs on a day
Nevertheless, the aim of this text was by no means to focus on the quantity of knowledge that massive corporations have collected on me or the methods by which they may course of it to know extra about me. As a substitute, spotlight the variety of totally different ways in which the identical dataset may be represented to know day by day occasions and processes and draw consideration to some ingenious methods people and corporations can use knowledge to reinforce our day by day lives and progress society. No person is suggesting that this knowledge evaluation is a kind of examples or that it has revealed a lot in the way in which of significant perception.
It was all made attainable due to laws permitting people to have better management over their very own private knowledge as highlighted firstly of this text. I consider that laws identical to that may result in an excellent better data-sharing economic system.
One which incentivizes all members to participate. Listed here are some examples:
- Monetisation over a present current asset that isn’t utilised on this method.
- Higher life outcomes and normal day-to-day life
- Developments in Science and Know-how
While additionally balancing the privateness rights of these concerned with this knowledge assortment, by adhering to the next:
- Whole anonymisation of knowledge however as an alternative totally different aggregations of this knowledge to point out traits.
- Guaranteeing sturdy licensing methods are in place to make sure that knowledge is barely used for the needs it was collected for and correct entry controls.
- Guaranteeing no dangerous actors acquire personally identifiable knowledge for sinister functions.
I might invite you to consider among the methods private knowledge from your individual lives could possibly be used to make higher decision-making throughout the context of your individual life. This was a brilliant easy course of so if you wish to do that for your self I’ve added some YouTube tutorials on learn how to obtain and request your private knowledge from third-party suppliers.
The put up Gathering Apple and Spotify Information on Myself : Right here is What I Discovered appeared first on Datafloq.