Comments Settings & Ramblings (serious ramblings, you've been warned)

There have been various mentions of changing the settings on the comments for some reason. Does anyone know what the changes are that were recommended and why? I really couldn't figure it out and now that's bugging me! Thanks in advance for helping me figure out this mystery!

And, while speaking of comments, I read a lot of blogs. I get them in a reader feed and I like to keep up with them as much as I can. Anyway, I used to think well all I really have to say is "congratulations" or "good job" and decided that wasn't valuable or enough. In the past couple of weeks, I changed my thinking on that. I thought back through my journey and realized that one or two words was important to me. In blog land it's also some sign that "hey, look someone IS reading this". So, that's what I do now. Because I really am excited for people---every success makes me smile and I can relate to nearly all of the struggles and stumbles along the way. I hope that when the one or two words are posted  that they take it positively and not that I'm lazy or something. Anyway, not sure where all that came from...

Excess Weight Loss post...Thanks for the comments! I think my intent of the complex math might have gotten a little lost in the shuffle of the complexity. All the articles and studies on lap band make references to results based excess weight loss. Like this:

I hadn't been able to find a definition for how EWL was calculated directly where I would see the references and percentages and I wanted to figure it out. What I find a bit shocking is that based on the calculation that I found results are not as high as I personally perceived them. As you can see above 3 years out is 64% / 73% here. Using the calculation to determine my excess weight loss, my results are 156.7%. While I think I have been successful, I don't think in reality it is 156.7% worth of success.

What concerns me has to do with the averaging that occurs on the data. With results like mine, mixed with others like me, it moves up the average. Just for illustration, if you take a 156.7% and a 10% result, then the average would be roughly 83%. And, when I see just "83%" without the details, my reaction is "hey, that's good. this thing really works". But if I saw the data behind the percent would I still be as impressed? And, yes there's all that highs and lows average out, but what if I saw another cut of the data that really showed I had a 50/50 chance of being a high OR a low and there weren't many inbetween? The scenarios are endless and pretty pointless without the "real" data which I don't have access to - RATS! Bottom line data can be used in such a way to support a desired perspective...and I'm just a data dork. Please disregard. HA!

YA FRIDAY!!!! : )