11–20 of 22 posts
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How often are you converting miles to feet?
When I'm cycling I'm comparing metres to kilometres all the time; in imperial you'd presumably have to do the same with feet to miles (or maybe yards, but they seem to be a more obscure measurement - e.g. people talk about speed in feet per second but not in yards per second).
Metric is not “automatic” either. One year in university I took three classes that happened to be in the same classroom. One was in cgs, one was in MKs and one in ASME units (US customary units plus mils). Three different subject domains. It didn’t feel odd or complicated.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How often are you converting miles to feet?
Giving road directions, especially if you are sitting in the passenger seat navigating for someone, is an example that comes up in my life fairly frequently. It gets awkward to talk about things that are between 0 to 1/2 mile so I find myself trying to do the mental math to convert to feet for someone else. These days I usually give verbal directions in meters. Most people in the United States seem to have some conce…
I think most people in the US just convert the meter to the three-foot yard measure. I doubt people would notice if you did the same thing in order to give estimates in feet. I work in metric weights but speak to people using US Imperial weights, so I regularly say something is "about 4 ounces," and the same idea of something being "about 1000 feet" would likely be fine since you're already estimating.
I grew up in a metric using country, I didn't learn imperial until I had to for a job. I came to appreciate the way being broken into 16ths, 8ths, 4trs, and halves really worked well for hands on practical things. Unfortunately, I had to work in decimal inches a lot and had to convert back and forth between metric and that's where the arbitrariness of the imperial system began to make my brain hurt. 1.181 inches will…
In fact, I think that would be outside of any allowable tolerance in any industry I can think of, except for maybe rough-in framing in home construction.
Curious, what was the medium and how expensive was this mistake?
24 days ago... https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24327740
Earlier quoted context omitted.
How often are you converting miles to feet?
Giving road directions, especially if you are sitting in the passenger seat navigating for someone, is an example that comes up in my life fairly frequently. It gets awkward to talk about things that are between 0 to 1/2 mile so I find myself trying to do the mental math to convert to feet for someone else. These days I usually give verbal directions in meters. Most people in the United States seem to have some conce…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not great. We have a base 10 number system so everything should be in powers of 10. Not too familiar with my 528 multiplication tables.
> We have a base 10 number system You hit the nail on the head. Bases 12 amd 60 are much handier as they have more factors.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
It's not great. We have a base 10 number system so everything should be in powers of 10. Not too familiar with my 528 multiplication tables.
How often are you converting miles to feet?
I grew up in a metric using country, I didn't learn imperial until I had to for a job. I came to appreciate the way being broken into 16ths, 8ths, 4trs, and halves really worked well for hands on practical things. Unfortunately, I had to work in decimal inches a lot and had to convert back and forth between metric and that's where the arbitrariness of the imperial system began to make my brain hurt. 1.181 inches will…
Sucks that your customer didn’t pay attention to the details, but I can understand losing your mind over a 0.069 inch mistake. That’s greater than 1/16 inch. It’s huge . In fact, I think that would be outside of any allowable tolerance in any industry I can think of, except for maybe rough-in framing in home construction. Curious, what was the medium and how expensive was this mistake?