Haha, a year ago I probably would have agreed that this seems a bit ridiculous. But after months of reading about caring for newborns and raising children, it became abundantly clear to me that data like this can be useful.
After about a month of collecting data, we have a pretty good handle on baby's "schedule" and can take a quick look at our dashboard to help determine why he might be crying his little face off. After many weeks of frustrating struggle with this, I can't even put a price on the value of the data we now have. YMMV (:
Helping out with another person's baby, I found that it was useful to see things like "is the baby behind on their usual food intake?" or "has the baby been asleep for a long time?" Tracking (via any means) was helpful to find such information, as you say.
This actually makes me think the app needs some sort of quick statistical data in the dashboard, or somewhere, for non-regular caregivers (e.g. a friend/new babysitter). My wife and I have spent so much time with the data that we "just know" the timing of things and the "last X (feeding, sleep, etc.)" is enough for us. But that wouldn't necessarily suffice for others.
After about a month of collecting data, we have a pretty good handle on baby's "schedule" and can take a quick look at our dashboard to help determine why he might be crying his little face off. After many weeks of frustrating struggle with this, I can't even put a price on the value of the data we now have. YMMV (: