What determines the ordering of activity types on my in-app Profile tab?

[dantsai]

When I go to the "You" tab on the mobile app (I'm on iOS), for some reason "Walk" shows up first, followed by All Run, Run, and Bike. "Run" is set as my primary sport, so I can't think of any reason why Walk would be shown first.

I've attached a screenshot below. It seems unintuitive to me, and there's no way to change the ordering.

[jtholl76]

Strava and tech really have no idea what the algorithm is for ordering activities.  Their answers are always different and always “the algorithm is working properly.”  For July, August, September, I’ve been out of town 4 weeks so 4 weeks I am not walking my dogs but I record a “run” everyday regardless of where I am.  I had about 275 miles of running in July, 180 in August, 150 so far in September.  I had about 42 miles of walking in July, 72 in August, about 30 in September so far.  I still have walk as first activity listed.  Dumb dumb dumb.

[Soren]

I'm sorry the ordering is causing you such frustration. I've taken a look at your activities and it looks like you've uploaded 6 more walk activities than run activities in the past 12 weeks. The mileage/times don't play into the ordering calculations, just the number of activities per Sport Type. So if you for example do a short walk every day but one long run a week, walk will appear first and run second. If you want us to investigate further, please submit a support ticket including a screenshot of your 12 week chart and we’ll look into it for you.

[Soren]

Hey Dan, that's interesting, thanks for corroborating that. Let me look into this a bit further, I'll get back to you next week!

[Soren]

Hey Dan, the order on the personal progress chart is based on how much time you’ve spent doing each sport type over the last 12 weeks -- your overall number of activities for each of them and default sport type don't factor into that. So the sports you spend the most time doing will be shown first. Hope this clarifies that for you.

[dantsai]

Thanks Soren. In that case, perhaps there's something wrong or buggy? I just added up the time spent on my activities in the past 12weeks... and I've spent ~29hrs walking, and ~48 hours running, ~46 hrs biking. So there's no reason Walk should be first on my list.

[Soren]

Dan, my bad. Apparently, there were some changes made to the ordering of the chart when Trail Sports were rolled out on 6/15 and it depends on the number of activities carried out. However, Grouped sports (All Ride, All Run, All E-Ride) will always show up first. Can you let me know if "All Run" appears before "Walk" on your chart now?

[dantsai]

The order on my Profile tab is "Walk", "All Run", "Run", "All Ride", "Ride", "Trail Run", "Swim", "Virtual Ride"

Note I am using a beta version of the app, if this is relevant: 271.0.0 (r34012)

[Soren · Accepted solution]

Thanks for the info, Dan. I cross-referenced this with our engineers and the ordering appears to be working as intended. The changes that were rolled out made it so that the order is determined by the number of activities per sport type, the more frequent and recent, the more prominent it will be in the chart. However, if you've carried out multiple activities that fall under one of the Sport Type groups (All Ride/Run-E-Sport) -- e.g. Ride and Mountain Bike Ride, then the "All Ride" category would appear before "Ride" or 'Mountain Bike Ride". Apologies for any confusion, I hope it's clear now.

If you have any feedback in regards to the way it's displayed or ordered, we're eager to hear about it and I'll be happy to pass it along.

[dantsai]

Thanks for following up, makes sense as a reasonable approach. I had one recent week with a lot of short walks, which might have biased the algorithm to bubble up Walk to the top, despite having less aggregate time over 12 weeks.

I'm not sure how to articulate a preferred solution. I don't prefer seeing Walk as the top result, but I can't deny I did a bunch of walks last week that probably tipped the scale.. it just seems a bit weird to me, since I generally actually run/bike way more than walking ( just not recently), and Run is my "Preferred" Activity Type in my settings.