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Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

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Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#171

Post by XorNot »

raldi wrote: post #26
Schweigi wrote: post #21

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well its rather easy to make your own thermometer using the Celsius scale. Put quicksilver in a small glass tube and put it outside. When water starts to freeze mark the current position with 0. Drop it in boiling water and mark it with 100. Evenly distribute now 98 markings between the two existing ones and voila you have just made your own thermometer :)

Evenly distributing 98 markings is hard. Evenly distributing 64 is easy -- just halve the range six times. That's why the distance from freezing water to body temperature is 64 Fahrenheit degrees.

Which makes no difference because you're eyeballing it to start with. You can just as easily divide the 0-100 range in half a bunch of times. Your thermometer is not achieving Of course if you have a tool to accurately measure halves, then you can also measure any other division you care to use.

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#172

Post by jjindev »

As a guy with a chem degree, I prefer Metric in the lab, and Imperial (US) in the kitchen or workshop. It isn't really that hard to shift gears/units for your task.

Even better is when you learn to cook or build without measurement, just transferring sizes directly. See James Krenov on building a cabinet.

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#173

Post by letney »

kps wrote: post #43
upofadown wrote: post #17

Since our civilization seems to have moved to binary for actual computations I wonder if we will someday go back to thinking in terms of halves, quarters, eighths, etc. of some standard unit. Then people would mock the metric system for being implicitly based on the biological accident of ten fingers...

Indeed —​ you can't even represent 0.1 in IEEE floating point, so who in their right mind would try to build a measuring system on tenths?

> "you can't even represent 0.1 in IEEE floating point"

Not true, the IEEE 754-2008 standard provides a Decimal Floating Point specification in binary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_floating_point#IEEE_754...

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#174

Post by letney »

kps wrote: post #43
upofadown wrote: post #17

Since our civilization seems to have moved to binary for actual computations I wonder if we will someday go back to thinking in terms of halves, quarters, eighths, etc. of some standard unit. Then people would mock the metric system for being implicitly based on the biological accident of ten fingers...

Indeed —​ you can't even represent 0.1 in IEEE floating point, so who in their right mind would try to build a measuring system on tenths?

> "you can't even represent 0.1 in IEEE floating point"

Not true, the IEEE 754-2008 standard provides a Decimal Floating Point specification in binary.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_floating_point#IEEE_754...

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#175

Post by XorNot »

hatandsocks wrote: post #133
peterkelly wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Celsius... 0: Freezing point of water 100: Boiling point of water A lot more precise than the rationale you proposed.

> 100: Boiling point of water Nope! Boiling point of water at 760 Torr . In contrast, Fahrenheit uses a frigorific 1:1:1 mixture of water, ice and ammonium chloride as the second reference point, which does not depend on ambient pressure.

But which conversely no one in day to day life ever uses or is likely to come across, whereas the vast majority of the world's population still lives as close as it can to sealevel.

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#176

Post by walshemj »

ScottBurson wrote: post #109
walshemj wrote: post #88

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And "codes" !!

Actually, the use of "code" as a count noun is quite old and well entrenched in the numerical modelling community. I can recall back in the early 1970s hearing Fortran programs routinely referred to as "codes".

Seeing as I started as a Fortran programmer in the 70's I have never heard this usage.

Oh and this was on campus at CIT for a world leading RnD organisation in their math modelling section.

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#177

Post by walshemj »

Natsu wrote: post #116
ScottBurson wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the use of "code" as a count noun is quite old and well entrenched in the numerical modelling community. I can recall back in the early 1970s hearing Fortran programs routinely referred to as "codes".

Code is a weird one because there are times when it's correct (e.g. "encryption codes"). But when it's used to mean "software" it should never be "codes", IMHO, though I guess there's a minority in disagreement.

Yep "codes" just makes you sound amateur and third rate.

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#178

Post by evacchi »

Natsu wrote: post #116
ScottBurson wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Actually, the use of "code" as a count noun is quite old and well entrenched in the numerical modelling community. I can recall back in the early 1970s hearing Fortran programs routinely referred to as "codes".

Code is a weird one because there are times when it's correct (e.g. "encryption codes"). But when it's used to mean "software" it should never be "codes", IMHO, though I guess there's a minority in disagreement.

same for "data"

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#179

Post by Havvy »

allegory wrote: post #70
dalke wrote: post #3

I have some difficulties with the issues described in the piece. "A yard is the distance from your sternum to the tip of your outstretched hand." According to folk belief, it's the distance from the tip of Henry I's nose to the end of his thumb. According to an early definition, "It is ordained that 3 grains of barley dry and round do make an inch, 12 inches make 1 foot, 3 feet make 1 yard." Who here has an idea of t…

Isn't this akin to the reddit meme of showing everything next to a banana "for scale" comparing body parts? I.e. non-deterministic and from a scientific perspective, total horse shit.

That was an Imgur meme first. One of the original Imgur memes at that.

Re: Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America

#180

Post by cdash »

riffraff wrote: post #165
alayne wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The U.S. uses the metric system and the customary system. Even many countries that are primarily metric use non-metric units like stones for body weight or feet for airplane elevation. I agree that metric would be a better system, but your implication that we can't compete in the global economy with our mixed unit system seems hyperbolic since we have already been competing just fine.

who uses stones for body weight?

It is still widely used in the UK.
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