TOOLBOX: Thanks to advances in wearable biosensors, a modern cyclist can seem like a Formula 1 car in the vast array of data available during and after a ride. Here’s a closer look the current state of wearable sensor tech, and some considerations in deciding what might help you in health, training, and racing. Today, I’ll go through some major concepts when it comes to evaluating a wearable biosensor. This article is NOT a review of any individual sensor.
I also highly recommend the two articles I’ve placed in the References section if you want a deeper dive into the emerging wearables technology and their potential in sport science (Ye et al. 2020; Shei et al. 2022).
Accurate and/or Reliable?
One of the biggest concepts to understand about a sensor, whether it is a bathroom scale or a wearable sensor, is accuracy/validity and reliability/precision . These terms are often incorrectly used interchangeably or wrongly defined, so let’s clear this up with an example of you wanting an altimeter to measure the true elevation at the top of Mount Everest (8,848 m):
Accuracy/validity: Does the sensor give you the true value that you’re trying to measure? In the Everest example, does it actually give you the value of 8,848 m at the summit or does it give you 8,200 m?
Reliability/precision: If you take multiple readings with the same sensor, does it give you the same value? For the Everest example, a sensor that gives you 8,200 m each time is […]
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