181–190 of 363 posts
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?
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Hmm, I have the same intuitive feeling with Celsius. I guess it depend on which temperature system you grew up with.
As I suggested on a parallel reply, could you say a bit more about why you feel it makes sense, perhaps with a chart like the one I wrote up?
Maybe I'm missing out on something but I never felt the need for a chart.
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?
> Well, to be fair, those anti-metric folks had at least one point in their favor: Customary measures make a lot more sense to us. The author is full of it. Whichever system you grew up with will seem natural to you. This misconception comes up time and time again: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7821501 The article seems like fluff; the author isn't even making novel mistakes. He even says that the metric syste…
Yeah. I live in Italy, but grew up in the US. I'm happy with the metric system and wished we had it in the US too, but for certain kinds of measurements, it still doesn't feel quite as natural to me. It depends entirely on how much I use something - temperatures in metric are second nature, because you feel that on your skin every day. Things like people's heights or weights, not so much. How many atmospheres to pump up my road bike tires? I have no idea, I use the pounds per square inch scale on the pump!
I don't try and justify any of this, it's just what I grew up with.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I guess the real issue is which units get names. Yes, you can do with 12cm exactly what you can do with 12in- but the latter gets its own named unit. The Imperial system has a preference for scaling its units by some slightly more practical number of sub-units- 12, 60, etc. I can imagine someone saying, for example, "why name 1000 centimeters as another unit? Can't I say 'thousands' using the same number of syllables…
There's really only one unit for length: the meter. Centimeters aren't a different unit, they're "hundredths of a meter". You can call your lengths of timber "frobs" if you want, even in public! You could have people order them that way and sell them that way. The only requirement most places have is that you also specify what that is in meters so that people who don't know what a frob is, know what they're buying. I…
Seriously though good question. First though it made me realize that you never see prices in thirds of a dollar- as if everyone avoids it and have simply gotten used to avoiding it. I can't imagine a situation where ease of dividing by three for money actually adds any efficiency. Similarly, while I do see the value in dividing the day into 24 hours, I certainly wouldn't advocate a unit that's defined as one 60th of a second (even though it has even more prime factors than 12 ;)
I concede that the use-cases where having more prime factors and therefore easy non-decimal division are few and far between. I guess what surprised me when doing construction was that there was a very rational reason for a foot being 12 inches rather than 10- that it's not simply a relic of the fact that a human foot seems to be about 12 thumbs long- some arbitrary number accidentally ingrained in some cultures. And as illustrated by the fact that stocks were eventually decimalized and then made to trade at penny-granularity, computers and the fact that we don't do a lot of division in our heads or on paper anymore will probably eventually erase most remaining efficiencies.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
I would love to hear from someone who does carpentry (or some craft-like equivalent) with the metric system- specifically what kind of ruler/tape they use and whether it has a special 1/3 and 2/3 mark on it (since you don't want to have to eyeball 0.33333....) or if they just avoid dividing things by three altogether. Because the truth is, your perspective is a political one more than a practical one. The whole idea…
You know, there's about 25 millimeters to the inch, and I've never seen anyone measure anything with more than 16th-inch precision for any construction job - maybe for very high-end cabinetmaking people use 32nds, but generally millimeters will give you more precision than you need, certainly if you're using a carpenter's pencil, which makes marks thicker than the smallest scale on a ruler. I have no problem dividing…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
> The author is full of it. Whichever system you grew up with will seem natural to you This is true to at least my case: grew up under the metric system and after 15 years living in the US, still have to mentally convert dimensions to metric in order to make sense of them: - If you point at something and ask me how far it is, the first number that comes to my mind is in meters, then I say that number and add "yards"…
Just FYI, "feets" isn't a word. The plural of feet is feet :) Similarly, "softwares" isn't a word either, but I hear it a lot. There's only software. I say this because it's a common mistake among people who speak well, otherwise.
Earlier quoted context omitted.
>a rational practical reason for sticking in some cases to Imperial units That to me is the worst of both worlds. The optimal solution is to use one consistent system and the winner is pretty clear. >carpentry Certainly. The future is full of 3D printers though.
Wood is an easily workable, relatively inexpensive, and, importantly, renewable resource. We'll be seeing more of 3D printing for sure, but you're kidding yourself if you think it'll replace carpentry.
I wasn't suggesting that 3d printing will replace carpentry...
I am not anti-metric by any means, but having done carpentry a lot in the past it always strikes me when this comes up that one of the central arguments for (a limited use-case of) the imperial system is usually glossed over: the fact that in many crafts (especially historically), using base-12 makes certain things much easier. It divides into 3rds far more easily, divides into 4ths slightly more easily, and still di…