61–70 of 150 posts
Short version. They don't really know. "Although it is unknown why 60 was chosen, it is notably convenient for expressing fractions, since 60 is the smallest number divisible by the first six counting numbers as well as by 10, 12, 15, 20 and 30."
As an American with a physics background, a while ago I casually reviewed how bad our non-metric system is -- http://joshuaspodek.com/metric-system-isnt -- and found it not nearly as bad as people treat it. Among other things, when I build things it's useful to divide in half a few times, which is easier with inches and feet. And I've found no benefit to Celsius's 0 and 100 coinciding with water's state changing. I b…
As a European living in America I disagree. The one value of metric vs imperial is that you (for the most part) don't have to do any math when converting between units. If I have 1.73 miles, I have to do the math to figure out how many feet that is, 1.73*5280~=9134, which is not something that's easy for me to do in my head. However, 1.73 km is 1730 meters, which is way easier (at least for me, but that might be my b…
As an American with a physics background, a while ago I casually reviewed how bad our non-metric system is -- http://joshuaspodek.com/metric-system-isnt -- and found it not nearly as bad as people treat it. Among other things, when I build things it's useful to divide in half a few times, which is easier with inches and feet. And I've found no benefit to Celsius's 0 and 100 coinciding with water's state changing. I b…
Similarly, people will claim it makes no sense that American M/D/Y dates are neither monotonically increasing nor decreasing, but then they'll find it totally natural to use "D/M/Y H:M:S" or "H:M:S D/M/Y" and not even notice that they share that same alleged flaw.
[1] Except for years BCE which the scheme doesn't treat.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a European living in America I disagree. The one value of metric vs imperial is that you (for the most part) don't have to do any math when converting between units. If I have 1.73 miles, I have to do the math to figure out how many feet that is, 1.73*5280~=9134, which is not something that's easy for me to do in my head. However, 1.73 km is 1730 meters, which is way easier (at least for me, but that might be my b…
>If I have 1.73 miles, I have to do the math to figure out how many feet that is, 1.73*5280~=9134, which is not something that's easy for me to do in my head. How often do you need to do this in reality? Most people in their day-to-day have no need to these conversions.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a European living in America I disagree. The one value of metric vs imperial is that you (for the most part) don't have to do any math when converting between units. If I have 1.73 miles, I have to do the math to figure out how many feet that is, 1.73*5280~=9134, which is not something that's easy for me to do in my head. However, 1.73 km is 1730 meters, which is way easier (at least for me, but that might be my b…
No, you're absolutely right. Thing is, most of the time, when dealing with miles, I don't care how many feet it is. Any distance measured in miles is sufficiently large that its equivalent in feet is largely irrelevant. I suppose it's nice to know that 1.73 km is 1730 meters, but either way, it's a medium-long walk. If I needed to convert all the time ( I suspect this it's really only when using compound units like p…
Also all physics and engineering formula are designed to get and return metric values. When I see K = 0.5mv^2, I know v is supposed to be m/s and m is in kilograms and the result would be in Joules. If it's E = m*c^2, the same thing could be inferred about it.
I'm curios with all different units of measurement, how do you know when to use which. Is there a convention to always e.g. use ft/s or is it different in each formula?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Similarly, people will claim it makes no sense that American M/D/Y dates are neither monotonically increasing nor decreasing, but then they'll find it totally natural to use "D/M/Y H:M:S" or "H:M:S D/M/Y" and not even notice that they share that same alleged flaw.
I'm just glad that nobody in Europe seems to use YYYY/DD/MM. This means that the format "YYYY-MM-DD" is unambiguous and the lexical ordering of dates is the same as their natural ordering[1], which is useful for sorting files in folders. [1] Except for years BCE which the scheme doesn't treat.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
As a European living in America I disagree. The one value of metric vs imperial is that you (for the most part) don't have to do any math when converting between units. If I have 1.73 miles, I have to do the math to figure out how many feet that is, 1.73*5280~=9134, which is not something that's easy for me to do in my head. However, 1.73 km is 1730 meters, which is way easier (at least for me, but that might be my b…
>If I have 1.73 miles, I have to do the math to figure out how many feet that is, 1.73*5280~=9134, which is not something that's easy for me to do in my head. How often do you need to do this in reality? Most people in their day-to-day have no need to these conversions.
of course perception of a metric also plays a tremendous role here. I don't have a 'feel' for how long it is 12-feet for example but I can eye-ball a distance and tell how many meters it is pretty accurately. I guess this perception is the main issue that prevents imperial system to be abandoned in favor of SI - people are too much used to it.
I also hate the left driving lane of UK btw. It screws up with my head every time I rent a car in London...
stupid metric-ism ;)
As an American with a physics background, a while ago I casually reviewed how bad our non-metric system is -- http://joshuaspodek.com/metric-system-isnt -- and found it not nearly as bad as people treat it. Among other things, when I build things it's useful to divide in half a few times, which is easier with inches and feet. And I've found no benefit to Celsius's 0 and 100 coinciding with water's state changing. I b…
Similarly, people will claim it makes no sense that American M/D/Y dates are neither monotonically increasing nor decreasing, but then they'll find it totally natural to use "D/M/Y H:M:S" or "H:M:S D/M/Y" and not even notice that they share that same alleged flaw.
Additionally, the point of doing it the other way round is that the most important thing is on the left, where we start reading, followed by less important things. If I need to know the time of day, the hour is the most important thing, once I know whether it's 4 or 6, I can look at the minutes and first then do I perhaps (and does one really ever?) care about the seconds. As a matter of fact, my old wristwatch only had hour and minute hands... The opposite is true for the date. It starts, again, with the most significant thing on the left: the day. This assumes that people will probably have it easier to remember the month or year they live in.
And a final example: I have an appointment on the 24/01/2014 at 10:15:00. The most important questions are: What day do we have? And if it happens to be the 24th, what hour of the day is it? Is it 5? Good, 5h left. Is it 10? Oh boy, better look at the minutes...
After the french revolution there was a short period (3 years) when the French had decimal time. It didn't catch on because that meant the workers had 10-day workweeks instead of 7. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_Calendar As a result, decimal clocks from that era are very rare and highly sought after!
It has nothing to do with how one day is divided, it's the calendar.
As an American with a physics background, a while ago I casually reviewed how bad our non-metric system is -- http://joshuaspodek.com/metric-system-isnt -- and found it not nearly as bad as people treat it. Among other things, when I build things it's useful to divide in half a few times, which is easier with inches and feet. And I've found no benefit to Celsius's 0 and 100 coinciding with water's state changing. I b…
Isn't the fact that the rest of the world uses those definitions an advantage in and of itself? What is there to be gained by being inconsistent? Relevant picture I found on twitter: https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bdp2YLFCIAAM1Dy.png