Project Glasses
Asians are known for a higher prevalence of myopia, or shortsightedness when compared to Western populations – and almost everyone owns a pair of glasses.
So today I took the liberty of my AL and did a little counting exercise on my way to taking my driving exam.
Methodology
For a 45 minute journey during midday I travelled from Ma On Shan to Sham Shui Po via Mass Transit Railway system on a sunny weekday during 1:00-1:45pm. I took the most direct route to avoid unnecessary lengthening of travel route and distance travelled was —-km as calculated by Google Maps.
I counted all passers-by within my visual field, who were wearing a pair of spectacle assumed for correction of any refractive errors. sunglasses or shades were counted separately. Reading glasses or bifocals were not grouped under subsets for individual study. Contact lenses were excluded from this study owing to poor feasibility.
Counting was solely performed by me and is determined by the range of my vision and ability to register so many faces at one time (for instance in MTR platform exchanges). Subjects obscured by other subjects, or not facing at my directions might be missed despite additional head turns were made to provide a wider viewing range. Double counting was minimized by face recognition of passers-by by me as sole investigator. Counting was performed by Counter+ App developed by Jason Workshop available on iPhone AppStore 2012.
Counting was started the moment I entered Heng on station and ended when I exited Sham Shui Po station. The process was minimally interrupted by periods of inattentiveness (eg to find the right platform, fetching my wallet before the turnstile..)
Here are the results.
Total number of persons I came across was hardly measurable. I would estimate seeing at least 1500 persons from such a short trip in an urban city public transport system. Number of persons wearing glasses was 267. Number of persons wearing sunglasses was 15. Percentages in this study was less significant owing to a largely estimated denominator however the ratio suggests a difference in popularity of these two items. This of course had to be calculated into the fact that the study was mostly carried out in an underground ambience where sunglasses were not usually worn. (NB but surprisingly the number of persons wearing sunglasses were mostly seen indoors on MTR or in hallways connecting platforms)
The prevalence of refractive errors cannot be extrapolated from this study as persons wearing contact lenses for correction were omitted, and there were a portion of people who prefer or tolerate their vision without fully correcting their refractive errors. And it can only be assumed that all people wearing glasses are wearing them for refractive correction instead of other purposes such as aesthetic complements.
So for conclusion,
This is a total crappy example of so called academic style article that was intended to kill some time and anxiety before my driving exam. This is academically useless and congratulations you have just wasted ten minutes reading this.
But seriously, only 15 people were wearing sunglasses on such a sunny day? No wonder numbers of cataracts and pterygia keep mounting to new heights!
If only there is one take home message from this crap, is do wear sunglasses to protect yourself from UV light damage to your eyes before it’s too late!
Enuf said, time for exam!
