Core Concepts
Conducting a personalized N-of-1 trial analysis to investigate the impact of alcohol consumption on sleep performance, and finding a statistically significant negative association.
Abstract
The content presents a case study on applying the N-of-1 trial methodology to analyze the author's personal fitness data collected from a Whoop wearable device. The goal is to investigate the relationship between alcohol consumption and sleep performance.
The key highlights and insights are:
The author provides background on N-of-1 trials, which involve conducting personalized studies to uncover insights about an individual's health and behavior.
The author describes the data collected, including sleep performance score and alcohol consumption, and performs exploratory data analysis to visualize the relationship between the two variables.
The author then conducts a hypothesis test to determine if there is a significant difference in mean sleep performance between nights with and without alcohol consumption. The null hypothesis is that there is no difference, while the alternative hypothesis is that there is a difference.
Using statistical techniques in R, the author calculates a test statistic and generates a null distribution to determine the p-value. The analysis finds a statistically significant difference, with an average sleep score 8.01 points higher on nights without alcohol consumption compared to nights with alcohol consumption.
The author concludes that the analysis supports the common advice that athletes should avoid alcohol, as it has a detrimental impact on sleep quality. The author also discusses the limitations of the observational study design and suggests potential future directions for more advanced analyses.
Stats
The average sleep performance score was 8.01 points higher on nights without alcohol consumption compared to nights with alcohol consumption.
Quotes
"Our analysis found that my average sleep score when I did not consume alcohol was 8.01 points higher than my average sleep score when I did consume alcohol. This difference was found to be statistically significant, with a p-value of 0.017, meaning that we reject the null hypothesis in favor of the alternative."