2011 Streak Day 131/365: Walk - 4.78 miles, Time: 1hr 30min. Weather - overcast
Somehow this is how a scout hut should be - hidden away in the woods.
Although this photograph is perfectly accurate it is also slightly misleading. The hut is not at all isolated. It is on the edge of a thin strip of woodland that runs alongside a road and is next to an area of housing.
If this was a political blog I would go on at length about the concept of 'accurate but misleading' because it is something that concerns me about current public debate. Factoids are flourished, wrenched out of context, used without any caveats, bent out of shape and then given a meaning they cannot support. Unless someone in the room is really clued up on the source, assertions will go unchallenged until they can be checked - but by then it is too late.
Statistics should never be taken at face value, never accepted without knowing their origin, method of collection, and limitations of scope.
Luckily in my simple world I do not need statistics to prove anything. I am just trying to records how far I have gone and how long it took. Even then things are not totally straightforward. The mileage for walking and running is based on my foot pod, which will give a slightly different measurements for the different activities, or even on different days. I don't mind the discrepancies because the error is quite small and I am more interested in overall trends and 'there or there abouts' is good enough. (However I like to give them spurious accuracy by quoting them to 2 decimal points).
The timings are also out, especially for walking as I do not count the stops. On walks I often pause to look out for photos or see if there is something to write about. The figure is thus very approximate.
So my figures my not be totally accurate but neither are they misleading. I am happy with that.
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