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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

#261

Post by snarfy »

jwecker wrote: post #89

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…

Ten has three factors: 1, 2, 5.

Twelve has five factors: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6.

When dealing with fractions, twelve is more efficient. I agree imperial units still aren't worth the trouble of being different than the rest of the world.

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

#262

Post by xkiwi »

yen223 wrote: post #248
tfinniga wrote: post #103

Here's my proposal: America goes metric, and the rest of the world starts driving on the right hand side of the road.

No way. Driving on the left makes so much more sense than driving on the right. If you're driving a manual transmission car on the left side of the road, you'd steer with your right hand and change gears with your left. This works out nicely for right-handed people, i.e. 90% of the population.

Right way. Driving on the right makes so much more sense than driving on the left.

If you're driving a manual transmission car on the right side of the road, you'd steer with your left hand and change gears with your right. This works out nicely for right-handed people, i.e. 90% of the population.

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

#263

Post by xxs »

jwecker wrote: post #69
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…

As you've illustrated, we've come to value precision over intuition. The reason people using metric don't feel like they're missing something without organic units is because people who use the relics of those organic units don't use them in the fuzzy organic sense either anymore. When someone tells me "1 foot long" I expect exactly 12 standardized inches- not something roughly as big as my foot (even though, in my c…

Metric users generally do not use organic units to describe extraordinarily large objects. That's it stuff like xx Olympic swimming pools or xx football fields (american nontheless) doesn't sound natural at all. It's all in meters/kilometers, etc.

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

#264

Post by Jedd »

whiddershins wrote: post #206

It drives me crazy that people think base 10 systems are so great. The choice of base 10 is so deeply irritating to me. Divisions of 60 are fantastic, obviously, and we all benefit from being able to divide an hour in to 5ths, 6ths ... Meanwhile splitting a check three ways is likely to always be uneven. Base 12 or 60 end up being more precise in every day life, and i wish whoever thought up the metric system had bee…

As has been pointed out elsewhere, the 95% of the planet that uses metric systems (including dollars and cents - a decidedly metric-friendly currency) has not ended up starving due to an inability to split a food bill by the number of people at the table.

Of course, you're right that if you and 59 of your closest friends were out for dinner, it'd be easier if currencies were based upon divisions of 60, that certainly makes some sense.

Maybe whoever thought up the metric system was smart in ways that you don't yet fully appreciate?

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

#265

Post by xxs »

jwecker wrote: post #186
phaemon wrote: post #153

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

You mean similar to how stock prices used to be demarcated or how foreign exchanges use 'pip' values? ;-) ( http://www.cringely.com/2012/09/05/ticked-off-how-stock-mark... ) 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…

Forex uses pips which are 1/10000 for EUR/USD, GBP/USD and the like or 1/1000 for USD/JPY. There are "sub-pips" that are 1/10 of a pip.

Pips are decimal, similar to millimeter that's 1/1000 of a meter. The point doesn't stand, imo.

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

#266

Post by ghshephard »

XorNot wrote: post #222
jeroen wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems more logical to me to go with 2.5 cm. It is closer to the truth (2.54 cm) and easier to calculate with.

Don't know why I wrote 2.4 - I was reading a bunch of other things up the page, but you're right.

But - that was actually a great (though perhaps unintentional) example of the dangers of having two systems and switching back and forth between them.

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

#267

Post by xxs »

snarfy wrote: post #261
jwecker wrote: post #89

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…

Ten has three factors: 1, 2, 5. Twelve has five factors: 1, 2, 3, 4, 6. When dealing with fractions, twelve is more efficient. I agree imperial units still aren't worth the trouble of being different than the rest of the world.

You shall count only the prime ones, both have only 2 prime divisors. Then 60 would be of real use (and it has been used in the past[1]... and still is in angular measurements with the famous 360 degrees) but it contains only 5 as extra prime divisor.

[1]: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal

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

#268

Post by xxs »

davidw wrote: post #185
SideburnsOfDoom wrote: post #19

> 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…

> Whichever system you grew up with will seem natural to you 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…

Oddly enough the SI unit is Pascal (Pa) or N/m2, not atmosphere. The technical atmosphere is: around 98KPa, it's not really metric.

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

#269

Post by T-hawk »

fennecfoxen wrote: post #146
MisterBastahrd wrote: post #138

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Converting liters to kilometers? I need to know how to do this! How many beers is a kilometer? Gonna get my jog on.

Assuming a 500ml beer... (500ml / 1 km) = 0.5 square millimeters. For interpretation advice, see also: xkcd. https://what-if.xkcd.com/11/

This actually has the same physical interpretation, right? If you took 500ml volume of beer and stretched it out to 1 km long, the stretched form would be 0.5 mm^2 in cross-section.

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

#270

Post by xxs »

jimbobimbo wrote: post #192
Pxtl wrote: post #72

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Inches to cm and back are actually an easy conversion so thinking in both isn't hard - 2.5cm/in, 30cm/ft. 1.6km/mi and 2.2 lbs/kg are a bit more annoying, and Fahrenheit are a freaking abomination.

C is roughly (F - 30)/2, not too bad. To make my life easier I also measure lb as 1/2 kg and driving distances as time.

I still remember the formula by heart C=5/9*(F-32), learned it a kid while reading books on electronics. Mentally I still use it to convert while watching a movie for example. However I still don't know how people prefer it over Celsius, the latter feels a lot more natural.

Pound to Kg is rather easy as it has to be multiplies by 2.2, adding 1/10 after multiplying by 2.

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