Death by Inches: The battle over the metric system in America • Hacker News Board

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

#251

Post by shdon » Sun, Aug 10, 2014, 2:02 AM UTC

bronson wrote: post #161

bronson wrote: post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think that working in hundreds of centimeters is easier?? I guess the system one first learns is the system that feels easiest.

Would be nice if one of the many downvoters would explain how working in the hundreds of centimeters is easier...?

Not one of the downvoters, but working in (hundreds of) centimetres (240cm) as opposed to meters (2.4m) is not as crazy as it sounds. Tape measures or carpenter's rulers will have centimetres on them all the way.

Also, people consider it a matter of precision. If I ask for a piece of wood that's 2.4m long, I am probably less concerned with the precise length than if I ask for one that's 2400mm long.

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

#252

Post by alayne » Sun, Aug 10, 2014, 2:05 AM UTC

yen223 wrote: post #247

XorNot wrote: post #164

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Haha what? No one using the metric system uses "stone" for body weight. They use kilos. Even the US doesn't use "stone" - you use pounds, which is your stand-in for the kilogram. EDIT: Seriously, I cannot think of a single country which uses "stone" for bodyweight. Maybe the British? But doctors don't, definitely not in Australia, and I've never heard anyone from any other places use it either.

Not sure why you're getting downvoted. Where I'm from, nobody uses stones, a few people use catty ( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catty ), some people use pounds, most people use kilos.

My comment was about the bad map. The map makes it seem like metric is a binary condition: you use it or you don't. That is not true, even though metric is the primary measurement system in most of the world. Many non metric units are in common use in primarily metric countries, just like the U.S. doesn't only use customary units.

The UK should also be highlighted on the map since they use stone and pints, as well as Canada and apparently Singapore and other countries in southeast Asia that use other units like catty and pounds. That Singapore or Australia don't use stone doesn't disprove my point in the slightest. I am just listing examples of non metric units in active use, in countries that the map claims use metric.

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

#253

Post by Dylan16807 » Sun, Aug 10, 2014, 2:06 AM UTC

nice_uname_nerd wrote: post #117

Havoc wrote: post #99

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.

I strongly disagree. Using the right tool for the right job is worth far more than enforcing arbitrary universal consistency. In a math course, you'd measure angles in radians so you're dealing with nice small multiples of pi. I think it'd be downright dangerous to use radians in a fighter jet, say, when the precision you need is much better provided by degrees. Imagine if we enforced only one programming paradigm, s…

Degrees are no more precise than radians. If you're a human you use a certain number of digits and they both work. If you're a computer using integers you're far too imprecise either way. If you're a computer using floats they are equally precise. If you're a computer using fixed point you're better off with something like 2^32ths of a circle.

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

#254

Post by Broken_Hippo » Sun, Aug 10, 2014, 2:10 AM UTC

anotherevan wrote: post #240

adventured wrote: post #221

I agree the US should fully adopt the metric system, it makes logical sense. And Europe should abolish about three dozen major languages that should no longer be in use and adopt English (or perhaps Spanish). Why does Bulgaria need its own language? Or Romania, or Sweden? Why does French still exist? We're talking about efficiencies here, right? What's less efficient than people not being able to easily communicate b…

Please describe the sacred cultural issues around retaining imperial units of measure.

I'd be happy to, but it is difficult to understand. For some reason things like changing to metric, in some people's mind, means adapting 'European culture' and is anti-traditionalist. From what I can tell, the same group that holds onto the imperial system is the same group that is upset that cursive writing isn't a mandated subject in schools (how will kids read the constitution) and other such aversion to change.

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

#255

Post by pavanred » Sun, Aug 10, 2014, 2:33 AM UTC

>> The Mars Climate Orbiter disintegrated due to an error introduced because its software used metric measures, while its ground crew used pound-force units.

There was an incident in 1983 where Air Canada Flight 143 ran out of fuel at 41,000 feet (12,500m) altitude [1] about half way through its flight. An investigation revealed that one of the cause was a conversion error between metric and non-metric units for the fuel loading calculation.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

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

#256

Post by shdon » Sun, Aug 10, 2014, 2:39 AM UTC

yen223 wrote: post #249

spullara wrote: post #168

Even though I'm an ex-physicist where nearly everything was done in metric, I'm decidedly anti-metric. Most of the metric system has no empathy for the everyday life of humans and is better suited for making scientific equations easier. It is roughly the equivalent of choosing esperanto for consistency.

I grew up in a metric country. The metric system is totally fine for everyday use. We know that 1.8m is tall, that anything below 5 celsius is cold, and that 100kg is heavy. The only downside is that some stats are only published in imperial units - fuel efficiency being the worst offender.

Except when you're Dutch and male, then 1.8m is not so tall.

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

#257

Post by jwecker » Sun, Aug 10, 2014, 2:39 AM UTC

amag wrote: post #234

jwecker wrote: post #115

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…

I've done a bit of carpentry around my house. Since I live in Sweden I always use the metric system. For me the focus on division by three is a bit strange. Sure I sometimes need to divide by three, but I also need to divide by five, or two or seven. I guess the thing is that our building standards are expressed in the metric system, so it makes sense thinking about them in terms of meters or centimeters. US building…

Point taken, and I acknowledged in my first comment that it was a weak reason compared to the reasons for adopting. It wasn't meant as advocacy :-)

I would point out however that no one (that I know of) claims that English is the most popular because it is intrinsically the most efficient for all situations- i.e., on its merits as an efficient language rather than geopolitical factors. I definitely think that there are certain situations where communicating using non-English would be (locally) optimal- even if the parties communicating were fluent in English. Even as a native English speaker I truly wish English had the equivalent of the Tagalog particle "daw/raw," for example ( http://tagaloglang.com/Tagalog-English-Dictionary/English-Tr... ), or the fact that Cantonese can often communicate the same information as English using far fewer syllables...

In other words, I'm perfectly fine saying that using English is globally optimal (and convenient for me) because of its adoption, while still being perfectly happy knowing that some languages have attributes that make them more efficient, if you know them, in certain circumstances. I don't pretend ex-facto that English got this way because it is a truly superior solution in all circumstances if only everyone knew it. Nor do I feel like English's status as a (quasi)-standard is threatened by someone pointing out that Swedish would be more efficient in some settings (say, family history) even if everyone did know English. I would say "cool."

Defining units in terms of other units via something other than base-10 scaling in order to have more integer factors than 2 and 5- in some cases trading the 5 for 3 and 4- can be advantageous. That's all I'm saying, nothing more or less :-)

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

#258

Post by sliverstorm » Sun, Aug 10, 2014, 3:15 AM UTC

arethuza wrote: post #159

sliverstorm wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The present is full of CNC machines, and yet cars are not milled out of billet aluminum. It's rarely worthwhile to fabricate something, when you can readily produce it from bulk forms like lumber or bar stock.

With the awesome exception of the Pagani Huayra: http://www.pagani.com/huayra/partners/aspa.aspx "Even the car's name tag positioned on the rear bumper, is carved in a 24 hour process from a solid block of aluminium. It is the Pagani way of reassuring its customers that their cars are built to their own standards exceeding the highest in the industry."

Great example really. Basically highlighting my message; it can be done (and can be awesome- machined parts are top-quality) but the Huayra costs $1.3M.

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

#259

Post by shmerl » Sun, Aug 10, 2014, 3:19 AM UTC

> Customary measures make a lot more sense to us.

Did they make any less sense in UK where they originated? Yet UK pushed through with switching to metric and went way further than US did. So this excuse isn't really valid.

The real answer is, that in US politicians were too weak to push this through, because all kind of manufacturers and unions were pressuring them to stop the effort. In UK they just ignored the pressure. In US they budged.

I wish US would already push this through, but so far it doesn't look very promising.

About natural. Take for example Celsius and Fahrenheit. Celsius based his scale on water freezing and boiling points, which are quite intuitive borders. At 0°C weather changes significantly since water freezing / melting has a noticeable environmental impact. So if you see -1° or +1° you can expect quite a change. On the other hand what are 31° and 33°? Fahrenheit took his scale without any pragmatic or practical goals of common usage. He did it for his scientific purposes. People more naturally operate with two digit numbers, which in Celsius case covers most of the normal range temperatures. It's good that at least Kelvin's scale didn't become commonly used in some countries...

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

#260

Post by spullara » Sun, Aug 10, 2014, 3:55 AM UTC

yen223 wrote: post #249

spullara wrote: post #168

Even though I'm an ex-physicist where nearly everything was done in metric, I'm decidedly anti-metric. Most of the metric system has no empathy for the everyday life of humans and is better suited for making scientific equations easier. It is roughly the equivalent of choosing esperanto for consistency.

I grew up in a metric country. The metric system is totally fine for everyday use. We know that 1.8m is tall, that anything below 5 celsius is cold, and that 100kg is heavy. The only downside is that some stats are only published in imperial units - fuel efficiency being the worst offender.

It really isn't the point that you can learn those things. People can also learn phone numbers and SSNs but we still use names. Wouldn't everything be much easier if we just referred to each other by our unique number? Addresses are also superfluous, just lat+lon with a unit # should be sufficient. Imperial measurements and their now American counterparts are based on human experience rather than something convenient with which to do calculations. Though the carpenters make a good case for 12in since it is so easily divided into 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, 1/6ths which are used often in construction. Even 1/5ths and 1/8ths go to only 1 decimal place. Metric is convenient for calculation and computing and not much more. Otherwise it is just a tradeoff you are making for a measurement system that wasn't designed around everyday life.