Glo Reading Life Reading Stats inaccuracy

[Uschiekid]

So I always was suspicious of the "Minutes each session" when reading an epub and going in to the Reading Stats after reading...BUT I knew that I often opened a book and then reclosed it right away and figured that that might be messing with this stat. Mostly they were saying between 10-15 mins...and I thought I read more than that on average.

Then recently I've not been doing any short sessions, so I figured the number should be much higher...but it only made it up to 23 mins.

So when I loaded a new book the other day, I didn't open it to make sure it had copied properly (it was a library book with DRM...which I have sometimes had issues with), but first opened it when I intended to have a long-ish reading session.

Before opening, I checked the stats...all zeros as expected.

After one reading session:
25 mins each session
0.8 hours read (which works out to 48 mins)

So with having only ever opened the book once, how exactly does it figure I read only 25 mins per session?

Not that important an issue I realise...but I'm trying to keep track of my reading habits since I read fairly slowly and would like to see how fast I can read effectively.

Anyway, curious if anyone has an idea about this. I'll report back when I've had my evening read and see if that ups the time significantly.

[PeterT]

Did you look up any words in the dictionary? I seem to remember that would add an extra reading session yo the count.

[Uschiekid]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Did you look up any words in the dictionary? I seem to remember that would add an extra reading session yo the count.

what a genius way to define a reading session

yeah, i did. also used the TOC. multiple times on both.

the other thing i thought of was that ADE opens the book automatically when i add a book...thought that might have made it two sessions. With my next library book I was going to try leaving it open more than 1 sec. and turning pages and see if that shows on the kobo stats.

[Lunchtray]

Originally Posted by PeterT

Did you look up any words in the dictionary? I seem to remember that would add an extra reading session yo the count.

This is exactly the reason. Anything that loads away from the current page will end your session. It's really dumb...

The popup hover dictionary and middle click menu doesn't break the session count but the full dictionary, TOC, items that fully load a new page end your current session it seems.

[Uschiekid]

Originally Posted by Lunchtray

This is exactly the reason. Anything that loads away from the current page will end your session. It's really dumb...

The popup hover dictionary and middle click menu doesn't break the session count but the full dictionary, TOC, items that fully load a new page end your current session it seems.

wow...is that ever silly....

i don't actually need the TOC much (I use it to check avg. chapter length at the beginning), and I wouldn't need the full dictionary except that it often doesn't know how to get rid of -ing or other suffixes....oh well....I guess I'll just have to keep rolling my eyes at that stat until they fix it by making it only reset when you actually CLOSE a book or go to sleep (the kobo...not me...I don't expect them to be that genius ) or whatever

Maybe they should allow for 5 to 10 minute gaps in a reading session. In addition to the absurdness of checking a definition or the table of contents splitting up a session, it's nice being able to get up and stretch while reading (or performing bodily functions).

[Uschiekid]

So I made an effort to not use the full dictionary or TOC and with a slightly longer read than the 25 mins per session, it did indeed go up to 27 mins. And then with quite a long read this morning, it got all the way up to 48 mins per session.

So I guess PeterT and Lunchtray are right...full dictionary lookups and TOC end a session....

O Kobo employees, wouldn't it be logical to change this?

Thanks .....

[nathan.grewal]

Stupid, huh? I read for, like, an hour on a kobo with dictionary and changing fonts and looking at the table of contents, and 5 minute sessions? Come on, guys!

[Ken Maltby]

What use do you make of this data? What do you use the reading statistics for?

Luck;
Ken

[speakingtohe]

Post 1 gives the Op's reason which seems reasonable. I don't use them because they never made much sense (I don't generally need to look up words and the dictionary is not very good so I don't and seldom use TOC.)

But if they worked I would use them to calculate pages per minute. I feel that I read ebooks with reader slower than paper or on computer screen.

Personally I would think dictionary lookup is reading too, because why look up the word if you don't read the definition?

Helen

[Ken Maltby]

Wouldn't it make more sense, and be more accurate apparently, to just keep a note of the page numbers and start and finish times?

I guess if you were looking to gauge an effort to improve your reading speed, such data might be useful. I am a little surprised if this would be something that very many readers would find actually useful.

There must be some other reason/s that a "Reading Stats" feature would be popular.

Luck;
Ken

[Uschiekid]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

Wouldn't it make more sense, and be more accurate apparently, to just keep a note of the page numbers and start and finish times?

No.




I wrote a reply but my tablet ran out of battery before expected, and I'm too lazy to rewrite

[jackastor]

Seems to me, that if the reasons stated here can cause a current read there could be some work needed on improving the compilation of said stats. However it is logical though if you go away from the current chapter and browse the contents or something, then that would count as a break. Meaning that your not currently reading the chapter. Regardless I guess some extra thought could be put into improving the collection and averaging of the reading stats?

regards

Jack

[jackastor]

Originally Posted by Ken Maltby

Wouldn't it make more sense, and be more accurate apparently, to just keep a note of the page numbers and start and finish times?

I guess if you were looking to gauge an effort to improve your reading speed, such data might be useful. I am a little surprised if this would be something that very many readers would find actually useful.

There must be some other reason/s that a "Reading Stats" feature would be popular.

Luck;
Ken

Some pages actually take more then one page turn to turn a page depending on font style and sizing...... on my reader I notice about 2 page turns per page! Something to consider though

regards

Jack

[Uschiekid]

Originally Posted by jackastor

Seems to me, that if the reasons stated here can cause a current read there could be some work needed on improving the compilation of said stats. However it is logical though if you go away from the current chapter and browse the contents or something, then that would count as a break. Meaning that your not currently reading the chapter. Regardless I guess some extra thought could be put into improving the collection and averaging of the reading stats?

regards

Jack

Maybe.... But do you really call it a new reading session when you spend 5 secs looking in the dictionary? I mean, by all means discount even rounded up to a minute, but to restart a reading session and make it seem like you read 20 mins at a go when you are actually reading for an average of 2 hours at one go, just seems a bit ridic.

Anyway, a bit funny that I'm getting drawn back into this, when I'd already resigned myself to not bothering with the stats almost a year ago