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Physiology & Medicine / Re: How is Body Mass Index - BMI - calculated?
« on: 09/10/2008 12:22:20 »
Thanks for the helpful post.
The formulae explain why I was not getting the right numbers.
It doesn't of course explain how everyone gets it to be a dimensionless number: these formulae would give units of kg/m^2 (I haven't checked yet, but presumably the 703 is a combination of the conversion factors for ft^2 to m^2 and lb to kg.)
I'm very disappointed to find from the BBC graph that I'm overweight: I've always thought of myself as rather skinny. But at least people won't laugh any more when I say I'm trying to lose weight.
The formulae explain why I was not getting the right numbers.
It doesn't of course explain how everyone gets it to be a dimensionless number: these formulae would give units of kg/m^2 (I haven't checked yet, but presumably the 703 is a combination of the conversion factors for ft^2 to m^2 and lb to kg.)
I'm very disappointed to find from the BBC graph that I'm overweight: I've always thought of myself as rather skinny. But at least people won't laugh any more when I say I'm trying to lose weight.