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ISO week date

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Re: ISO week date

#71

Post by _jal »

blattimwind wrote: post #43
_jal wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a communicative convention. If you're the only person following a convention, it isn't. At least this is an additive one - unlike imperial/metric, it isn't a unit replacement. Even if you like "better" measures, you may want to stick with local ones. Little story - I noodle around with metalwork, and have some machinery. Because I lived in Europe for a bit, I am comfortable with metric, and metric mental math i…

> I went metric. That was a mistake. It might be a mistake in the US, but of course machine shops outside the US are all metric - conversely, operating an imperial machine shop might be quite annoying outside the US. > It is fine, I'm happy with my setup. But there are reasons not to pick the "better" method. And those reasons perpetuate the existence of the other ones. Interestingly the US industry didn't switch to…

> Interestingly the US industry didn't switch to metric citing "conversion cost"

This isn't in the past - it is an ongoing argument that literally anyone who spends any degree of time in a machine shop gets roped in to. Every machine purchase is a vote on the ongoing argument.

Which is why I explicitly called it out - because of a collective action problem in the US, we can't make a simple, obvious efficiency change (which would indeed cause comparatively brief pain for large ongoing payoffs)[1]. It was a mistake for me to switch for the reasons specified. The interesting part is that correct micro-scale choices create a macro-scale problem.

Seems to be an ongoing theme of the past couple of decades.

[1] If you're not familiar with this, curious why a simple standards issue is well and truly unsolvable, and feeling masochistic you can search Youtube to catch what passes for mainstream political talking heads here making it about "heritage" and how the metric system is part of a UN plot.

Re: ISO week date

#72

Post by bshipp »

aex wrote: post #37
bshipp wrote: post #25

It seems like some people don't understand the use case for week numbers, at least for businesses. They allow the ability for time series comparisons for a work week. Using the calendar date is hopeless because the 21st day of a month could fall on any day of the week. I want to compare the Monday of the first work week of the year to the Monday of the first work week of last year. That's most helpful when trying to…

I don't think the following first weeks are comparable by many work metrics: * 30 December 2019 - 5 January 2020 (2020 W01) * 4 January 2021 - 10 January 2021 (2021 W01)

I don't disagree with you. Some of the decisions that went into the ISO standard are real headscratchers for those of us who have been using North American week numbers

Re: ISO week date

#73

Post by thaumasiotes »

wongarsu wrote: post #28
betimsl wrote: post #14

All this complexity because we have to adhere to some pope from 400 years ago. It's just sad.

Most calendar systems are complicated because they have conflicting goals. You just can't divide the year into even, intuitive, useful segments and have it line up with one rotation of earth

A more traditional approach to the calendar might have January 1st on the same day of the week every year, with a variable period of holidays at the end of the year that aren't part of the normal week system.

If we did things that way, the issue of "where should we start week 1?" couldn't even arise.

Re: ISO week date

#74

Post by ljm »

blattimwind wrote: post #43
_jal wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is a communicative convention. If you're the only person following a convention, it isn't. At least this is an additive one - unlike imperial/metric, it isn't a unit replacement. Even if you like "better" measures, you may want to stick with local ones. Little story - I noodle around with metalwork, and have some machinery. Because I lived in Europe for a bit, I am comfortable with metric, and metric mental math i…

> I went metric. That was a mistake. It might be a mistake in the US, but of course machine shops outside the US are all metric - conversely, operating an imperial machine shop might be quite annoying outside the US. > It is fine, I'm happy with my setup. But there are reasons not to pick the "better" method. And those reasons perpetuate the existence of the other ones. Interestingly the US industry didn't switch to…

The worst thing is (ignoring the irony of sticking to 'imperial' measures, as in old British empire measures), US imperial measures are different to imperial measures elsewhere.

At least with the metric system there's no ambiguity, and it's base10 so easier to calculate, and the orders of magnitude make sense. And they also translate; a litre of water is functionally equivalent to a kilogram in weight.

Re: ISO week date

#75

Post by knorker »

inetknght wrote: post #57
knorker wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Most calendars don't have them by default Oh? Google calendar and other software I use has them by default.

I think better said: don't have them _displayed_ by default

Everything I referred to does.

... What else could I have meant?

Re: ISO week date

#76

Post by jbj »

in Denmark it is quite normal to communicate by week numbers rather than dates. works well, some people are not used to it if they didn't grow up with it.

Re: ISO week date

#77

Post by yitchelle »

spectramax wrote: post #53
bshipp wrote: post #25

It seems like some people don't understand the use case for week numbers, at least for businesses. They allow the ability for time series comparisons for a work week. Using the calendar date is hopeless because the 21st day of a month could fall on any day of the week. I want to compare the Monday of the first work week of the year to the Monday of the first work week of last year. That's most helpful when trying to…

Yep, huge companies like Intel use work-weeks for everything. For e.g. planning huge engineering projects was easy: - WW02-WW16: Conceptual Development - WW17: CDR - WW18-46: Detail Design - WW46-48: DDR - WW48-52: Validation/Testing - WW01-02: Ship to customer So you could just now know how many weeks it took exactly for each phase: - [14] WW02-WW16: Conceptual Development - [1] WW17: CDR - [28] WW18-46: Detail Desi…

The ISO weeks are also big in automotive, especially on projects that span over a number of years. It automatically aligned most activities to have a duration measured in whole weeks. Sure, you can use fractional weeks, but then it gets really messy really quick.

Re: ISO week date

#78

Post by yitchelle »

oefrha wrote: post #23
mikl wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Depends a lot on your locale. Physical calendars around here always have them, and all decent calendar software has an option to display them. And if you’d grown up with it, it would be a lot more natural. Much like you probably know what month you’re in without checking your watch, I have a pretty good idea what week we’re in, and if someone says they can deliver something in week 8, I instinctively know that’s late…

> And if you’d grown up with it, it would be a lot more natural. That’s like saying imperial units are more natural than ISO units because you grew up with them. Of course what you grew up with is more natural to you, it doesn’t say much. The problem is not everyone grew up with it, compared to “the week of Dec 21.” Not saying week numbers aren’t useful, I’ve used them to label weekly results in datasets, for instanc…

No, it is natural to us because our working rhythm is based on a week. It just seems logical to think in terms of weeks.

Re: ISO week date

#79

Post by yitchelle »

baby wrote: post #45
TremendousJudge wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you weren't used to regular calendars you wouldn't know that "August 10" means "about the middle of winter" either

August 10 is actually the middle of summer oO EDIT: you are all lying, if christmas movies have taught me anything it is snowing everywhere in the world in december.

Not if you are living south of Tropic of Cancer.

Re: ISO week date

#80

Post by yitchelle »

betimsl wrote: post #14

All this complexity because we have to adhere to some pope from 400 years ago. It's just sad.

Back in the day, it made sense for someone with enormous influence to make such a decision. Imagine if it wasn't, the world today would have many more implementation of calendar that it does have.
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