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Let's stop counting centuries

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Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#441

Post by ryukoposting »

nephanth wrote: post #438
jonathan_landy wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re temp, I’m glad we use F for daily life in the USA. The most common application I have for temp is to understand the weather and I like the 0-100 range for F as that’s the typical range for weather near me. For scientific work I obviously prefer kelvin. Celsius is nearly useless.

I find it quite strange that Fahrenheit stuck in the USA with its wide range of climates of all places. I mean, that "0F to 100F is weather temperature range" completely falls apart unless you live in a very cold climate.

Sure, temperatures go outside those bounds, but only in the most extreme of weather conditions. Below zero? Above 100? You should probably stay inside today.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#442

Post by ryukoposting »

lye wrote: post #361
jonathan_landy wrote: post #317

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Re temp, I’m glad we use F for daily life in the USA. The most common application I have for temp is to understand the weather and I like the 0-100 range for F as that’s the typical range for weather near me. For scientific work I obviously prefer kelvin. Celsius is nearly useless.

What the hell are you talking about. If it's 0°C outside (or below that), I know that it's high time to put winter tires on because the water in the puddles will freeze and driving on summer tires becomes risky. I had to look it up, but apparently that's +32 °F. Good luck remembering that. +10°C is "it's somewhat cold, put a jacket on". +20°C is comfortable in light clothing. +30°C is pretty hot. +40°C is really hot,…

If you had to "look it up" to remember that 32°F is freezing (or that 212°F is boiling), then you clearly didn't "live with Fahrenheit" long enough to have developed even the most basic intuitions for it. That's first-grade stuff.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#443

Post by MarkLowenstein »

kelnos wrote: post #180
MarkLowenstein wrote: post #35

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Could make the convention to say "the twenty hundreds" when referring to [2000, 2100), and "the two thousands" for [2000, 3000).

I actually really like that! But then how about [2000, 2010)? During the current time period, I expect people are more likely to refer to the decade rather than the century or millennium.

I don't have a good solution for that. Perhaps we're finding out why people have come up with weird terms like "naughts" or saying "aught-five".

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#444

Post by drivers99 »

anyfoo wrote: post #29
drivers99 wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are numerous common concise ways to write the 18th century, at the risk of needing the right context to be understood, including “C18th”, “18c.”, or even “XVIII” by itself.

These are even more impractical, so I wonder what your point is? I can come up with an even shorter way to say 18th century, by using base26 for example, so let's denote it as "cR". What has been gained?

These are ones that are actually used, not just ones I made up. Sorry that wasn't more clear. I really hate conversation on this site.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#445

Post by anyfoo »

drivers99 wrote: post #444
anyfoo wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

These are even more impractical, so I wonder what your point is? I can come up with an even shorter way to say 18th century, by using base26 for example, so let's denote it as "cR". What has been gained?

These are ones that are actually used, not just ones I made up. Sorry that wasn't more clear. I really hate conversation on this site.

That wasn't the point. The point is that they are still more impractical than what the original comment suggested, shorter and common or not.

> I really hate conversation on this site.

Original commenter may feel the same about your reply.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#446

Post by krackers »

rbits wrote: post #436
TheAceOfHearts wrote: post #319

Another example of confusing numeric systems emerges from 12-hour clocks. For many people, asking them to specify which one is 12AM and which one is 12PM is likely to cause confusion. This confusion is immediately cleared up if you just adopt a 24-hour clock. This is a hill I'm willing to die on.

That's not inherent to AM/PM, it's cause for some reason the AM/PM switches on the boundary of 11 to 12, not 12 to 1. To fix this while still having AM work with 24hr time, it should be 0 instead of 12

Yeah it's just weird that a new day starts at 12am, and that the jump from am to pm happens from 11 to 12. If we made the day start at 0am, the noon start at 0pm, things are just logical. If you take x am to be x hours since the new-day marker, (or x pm to be x hours since noon), then you'd naively expect 12am to be noon. You could argue that we work modulo 12, but the extra am/pm bit means that it's not fully the same as working in Z/12Z.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#447

Post by runarberg »

ryukoposting wrote: post #440
runarberg wrote: post #407

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People normally just use the subunit which doesn’t divide. E.g. height is usually referred to in cm. If accuracy is important they use millimeters. Roadsigns for cars use km but downtown wayfinding signs for pedastrians use meters. I agree it is really nice to use base-12 until it brakes, but it brakes much worse then metric. If you have to divide into 32nds everything about feet and inches is much worse (in metrics…

Stepping down to the next unit doesn't necessarily make anything tidier. If I need to cut a 3.5-foot piece of wood into thirds, then I cut it into 14-inch pieces. If I need to cut a 1-meter piece of wood into thirds, I cut it into 33.3-centimeter pieces. Or, perhaps I want to hang two photos on a wall, spacing them evenly - the math from the example above applies again. Regarding your example of dividing 12 into 32 p…

I actually agree. The base-12 fractional system is very nice to work with, until it brakes, and it brakes much worse than the metric system. I actually explained in another post that if the USA were to move to metric, I think the construction industry will still be using feet and inches for at least a couple of generations (at least partially), and they would have a good reason to.

The way the metric system brakes isn’t actually all that bad, at worst you grab a calculator and write down the number.

And also bare in mind that this case is where feet and inches really shines, so we are comparing feet+inches at their best to metric at it’s worst. There are so many cases where metric is anywhere from marginally better to significantly better which does make up for that.

IMO the most significant reason for metric being superior is the universality of it. It is used everywhere in the world, including the USA, and that is an excellent quality of a measurement system which should not be understated.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#448

Post by nephanth »

ryukoposting wrote: post #441
nephanth wrote: post #438

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I find it quite strange that Fahrenheit stuck in the USA with its wide range of climates of all places. I mean, that "0F to 100F is weather temperature range" completely falls apart unless you live in a very cold climate.

Sure, temperatures go outside those bounds, but only in the most extreme of weather conditions. Below zero? Above 100? You should probably stay inside today.

In relatively hot climates, above 100F is still a pretty reasonable temperature, not something i'd call "extreme".

0F though is crazy cold. Where i live (south-western europe), getting below ~15 F is already considered extreme weather

All that to say that the farenheit system is really geared towards very cold climates. So it's kinda weird that it stuck in a country that also has pretty hot climates in the south

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#449

Post by ryukoposting »

nephanth wrote: post #448
ryukoposting wrote: post #441

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Sure, temperatures go outside those bounds, but only in the most extreme of weather conditions. Below zero? Above 100? You should probably stay inside today.

In relatively hot climates, above 100F is still a pretty reasonable temperature, not something i'd call "extreme". 0F though is crazy cold. Where i live (south-western europe), getting below ~15 F is already considered extreme weather All that to say that the farenheit system is really geared towards very cold climates. So it's kinda weird that it stuck in a country that also has pretty hot climates in the south

It's all a matter of perception (and humidity).

Where I live, 100F is a hellish, blistering day. 0F is just an uncomfortable day in January, but certainly not abnormal. Just wear your big coat and gloves.

That said, 100F in Wisconsin is a very different animal than 100F in Las Vegas. Wisconsin gets brutally humid as it gets hotter, and that makes it even more oppressive. Meanwhile, Nevada gets drier, and so the heat is more bearable.

If anything, I think it's kinda cool that Fahrenheit lines up with perceived temperatures this way, even across different climates with different humidity. Sure, you can point to extremes (Phoenix, Juneau) but those are... well, extremes. For most of us, it's pretty good!

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