Fitbit yearly average fluctuates throughout day

[Suzanne48864]

I’m trying to figure out why my fitbit steps are fluctuating. A few hours ago, my daily average for the year was 5540. I’ve continued walking throughout the day and now the daily average for the year has dropped to 5534. How is this possible? This frequently happens. When I first started looking at my daily average for the year, it was 5960. I vowed to get 7000 steps each day to bump up the average. One day it dropped to 5400 for several days, then went up to 5960 for a few days and finally settled back in the 5400s. I have continued walking each day to bump up the average. Not sure how it can go down despite getting more steps (in a two hour time frame late afternoon).

[JohnnyRow]

First I wonder where, you are seeing average daily steps for the year, presumably on the phone app, and how they are calculated.  If they are there, It is something I must have missed, and I always check how Fitbit does such calculations.
Is it for this year to date, or for the past 365 days?

[Suzanne48864]

It’s on the app. If you scroll down on your daily stats, you’ll see steps. Swipe sideways to see step averages for day, week, month, and year.

[Odyssey13]

Hi @Suzanne48864  think of it as a rolling average. Say you do 5,000 steps for six days in a row and then you do 7,000 steps the next day, That would show a total of 37,000 steps for the week or an average of 5,286 per day. The way it works per week is the last seven days that make up the week, not an actual week with certain dates, like Sept 16 to Sept 22. So when you get to Sept 23 the earlier day becomes Sept 17.  Same for the year as you'd be getting the last 365 days and it would change just like the weekly steps.  

Day 1, day 2, day 3, day 4, day 5, day 6, day 7 Then you'd see day 2 become day 1 as it becomes the first day of the last seven

Same with the month or year, each day changes the totals

Hey @JohnnyRow  you're good at this. Am I making any sense?

[JohnnyRow]

@Odyssey13That would have been true before Google redid the concept of week month, and year.  But it seems now it all is just week is from Monday til now, month is from first of month til now, not always 30 or 31 days, and year is just YTD, although I haven't checked this thoroughly in these calculations.  But right now it makes sense.  It shows my total steps so far this year.  If I divide that by my avg steps per day, almost exactly 272 days, which seems about right.

But as far as avg daily steps this year, I would expect it to drop slightly at midnight, then gradually climb throughout the day until midnight again.  At the beginning of the day, that effect would have been more pronounced; less pronounced the more day are added in.

Nope, I still got it wrong.  It still uses rolling average for weekly steps for friends list.  I guess Google didn't bother getting involved with that yet.

[Suzanne48864]

It would make sense if that was how the app is set up, but if you look at steps, you’ll see the week is Sunday to Sunday. The month is 1 - (number of days). The year is January to January. It ISN’T a rolling tally. My beef is that if I am averaging 5600 steps a year at 2:00 p.m. and I continue walking throughout the the day, how can my yearly average go down when my steps are going up. Your theory works on a rolling week/month/year. But FitBit is set up on a calendar year - at least on my phone. D