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It's time for the US to use the metric system

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Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system

#161

Post by riffraff »

marcosdumay wrote: post #159
sophacles wrote: post #53

Some thoughts on a conversion that I don't generally see brought up: * From an economic standpoint, the US is a big enough market that it is profitable to make things in weird US units, you have 350M people to sell to, most of whom are pretty well off by world standards. It makes sense to make a line catering to them. If businesses can start making a true or good economic argument it will happen more. * Tooling that…

From an economic standpoint, the rest of the world is a big enough market so that it's worth supporting too. And everybody gains when markets join. About tooling, yeah that's bad. But everybody has 2 sets of tools all over the world, because both US and rest of the world are big markets. A transition won't change a thing, the only thing that changes is that a few decades from now, everybody will stop needing one of t…

> But everybody has 2 sets of tools all over the world

Do they? I'm not a big DIY guy but I own a toolbox and I didn't even realize until now that a different set of tools may exist.

EDIT: I am not arguing it's not true, I am honestly asking

Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system

#162

Post by marcosdumay »

ds9 wrote: post #47
zimbatm wrote: post #9

It's hard to "make people think" in the different unit system. I'm in the UK and people talk about sizes in feet and miles all the time even though the society is supposed to have switched to the metric system. There are places like on product labels where both units should be mandatory. Hopefully in a few generations people will gradually switch over.

As a USian I can testify that there's a lot of irrational opposition here. Disclaimer: I don't have scientific sources on this, just subjective impressions from a lot of little interactions and clues. The resistance seems to be largely: (a) older people who doubt their own ability to adjust (b) right-wingers who are convinced it's a socialist conspiracy or somesuch (these are people who think international cooperatio…

We don't use measuring products that are all SI outside of the US either. You are big enough that it's worth making a dual use product.

Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system

#163

Post by raverbashing »

fluffyllemon wrote: post #61
bhousel wrote: post #23

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Fahrenheit (since this is a non-linear transform) huh?

For a function to be a linear transform it needs two properties[1]: 1. F(c1 + c2) = F(c1) + F(c2) 2. F(k*c1) = k*F(c1) Converting from Celsius->Fahrenheit (or vice versa) is does not have these properties. F(c) = 9/5 * c + 32 F(c1 + c2) = 9/5 * (c1 + c2) + 32 F(c1) + F(c2) = (9/5 * c1 + 32) + (9/5 * c2 + 32) = 9/5 * (c1 + c2) + 64 F(k*c1) = 9/5 * (k*c1) + 32 k*F(c1) = k * (9/5 * c1 + 32) = 9/5 * (k*c1) + k*32 Admitte…

" Admittedly, I'm not entirely sure why being a non-linear transform gets the OP so riled up."

Because it's harder to calculate mentally

One can approximate 2lb to 1kg roughly, 1mi ~ 1.6km, but for Fahrenheit this is harder

One solution is to establish a set point ( 70F = 21.1C, approximate to 20C ) then work in differences, since 1.8deltaF = 1deltaC so, 2dF ~ 1dC (or 10dF ~ 5dC)

Hence, 90F is approximately 30C (exact value, 32.2C)

Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system

#164

Post by raverbashing »

riffraff wrote: post #161
marcosdumay wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From an economic standpoint, the rest of the world is a big enough market so that it's worth supporting too. And everybody gains when markets join. About tooling, yeah that's bad. But everybody has 2 sets of tools all over the world, because both US and rest of the world are big markets. A transition won't change a thing, the only thing that changes is that a few decades from now, everybody will stop needing one of t…

> But everybody has 2 sets of tools all over the world Do they? I'm not a big DIY guy but I own a toolbox and I didn't even realize until now that a different set of tools may exist. EDIT: I am not arguing it's not true, I am honestly asking

There are sets of wrenches for example that have both SAE and metric heads

But usually in a home setting you "can" find one size that fits (somewhat) the other

Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system

#165

Post by soneca »

33W wrote: post #148
soneca wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is an interesting case of old unities remaining in use for centuries in Brazil: "arroba" This is wikipedia in portuguese for arroba through Google Translator (good enough to understand, just consider "arrogance" = Arroba): https://translate.google.com.br/translate?sl=pt&tl=en&js=y&p... Basically is a mass unit (in Brazil and Portugal), originated at the imperial system (with an arabic name ar-arub meaning "the…

If 1 Arroba was 25lbs, wouldn't a closer metricization be 10 kilos? This would be ~22lbs. Was there some other history to make this significant of a change?

Well, there were other arbitrary changes along the way. I think the wikipedia article deals with it. By the time someone changed it to kg, wasn't even 25lbs anymore. Who knows who decided it would be 15kg - but that is kind the point of the oddities when change measurement systems.

Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system

#166

Post by marcosdumay »

Havoc wrote: post #101
bryanlarsen wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YYYY-MM-DD is a much better choice. It sorts like a number, and it's unambiguous in standard usage.

>YYYY-MM-DD is a much better choice. It sorts like a number Not sure I disagree. Sure the sorting by numbers is of interest to the HN crowd but has little value to anyone outside of IT. In most cases I'm most interested in the "day" part so its convenient if thats first (which it is in 90% of the world).

The best part of YYYY-MM-DD is that almost nobody uses it, so it'll be easier to get everybody to support. I don't think we can standardize in either DD-MM-YYYY or MM-DD-YYYY.

Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system

#167

Post by stronglikedan »

IgorPartola wrote: post #65

I challenge you all to make two changes today with regard to this. First, switch your phone to give you the weather in Celsius. It gets super simple fast: 0 and below - Freezing. Wear a warm jacket and closed toe shoes or boots. 1 - 10 - Cold. Wear an overcoat (a light one if you are used to colder weather) 10-15 - Early spring time. Long sleeves are probably in order, maybe even a sweater. 15-20 - Late spring. Wear…

Specifically regarding temperature, I don't think Celsius is granular enough, unless you like working with fractions. For instance, in my home, I can feel the difference between 72 F (22.2 C) and 73 F (22.8 C), and I prefer 73 F. Fractions would be just as easy for me to decipher, but there are some dim folks out there that have to be catered to, because they are legitimate consumers.

Regarding other measurements, I agree that metric should be used, because it just makes sense. Millimeters are about as granular as 1/16 inches, so that would eliminate the need to work with fractions in most cases.

Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system

#168

Post by pmontra »

lispm wrote: post #109
pmontra wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Car engines are in liters over there I think. On the other side, TVs are in inches all around the world.

I also see centimeter for TV screens here in Germany. Example: LED TV, 98 cm (39 Zoll), Full HD, 100 Hz, DVB-T2/-C/-S2, Piano-schwarz

Great, maybe it will spread to other countries :-) Actually I'd like to see the actual width of the screen (bezel included) rather than the diagonal, which is pretty useless. It's to the width that I've been looking at recently when I wanted to know which TV fits into the space I have for it.

Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system

#169

Post by gambiting »

hfsktr wrote: post #128
gambiting wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have a car imported from US here in the EU and while driving it I just look at the smaller print in km/h, I honestly don't even notice the larger letters in miles now, it just became natural to look at the smaller print.

It still doesn't make much sense here though. I assume that where you are the speed limit is in km/h. Here it's mph. No matter what I have to know how fast I am going in mph so it makes no sense to bother knowing what I'm doing in km/h. If they changed all the signs to km based speeds (overnight) then I would probably do it but more likely I would remember where on the mph gauge the common km speeds and use those any…

Yeah, it sounds likely - but my point is that you would get used to it after a few days,and could continue using your car exactly as you did before. And all new cars would be produced with dials using km/h as the main unit,so the problem would eventually go away on its own. The only problem that I can think of occurs if your car somehow doesn't have a dual kph/mph dial,and shows miles per hour only. Then yes, it becomes an issue.

Re: It's time for the US to use the metric system

#170

Post by DanBC »

talideon wrote: post #98
sophacles wrote: post #53

Some thoughts on a conversion that I don't generally see brought up: * From an economic standpoint, the US is a big enough market that it is profitable to make things in weird US units, you have 350M people to sell to, most of whom are pretty well off by world standards. It makes sense to make a line catering to them. If businesses can start making a true or good economic argument it will happen more. * Tooling that…

> I dislike having to own wrenches in both standard and metric units I think you mean "I dislike having US customary and standard metric units". When it comes down to it, everybody else in the world managed to buckle down and just switch to standard metric units and ISO/DIN paper sizes. There is nothing special about the US that makes it any more of an imposition for them to switch over. Many of the issues you've out…

The UK took a while and still hasn't switched some units. Our speed limits are miles per hour; beer on draught in pubs is sold in pints and half pints (and it is not legal to sell it in other units even if clearly labelled with conversions).
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