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I agree that the Imperial system is a mess. 5,280 feet in a mile? But my point is that people who prefer old units are not being entirely irrational, or avers

I agree that the Imperial system is a mess. 5,280 feet in a mile? But my point is that people who prefer old units are not being entirely irrational, or averse to change. It's just that for their particular use case (making human-scale furniture out of wood, for example), the Imperial system works pretty well, and perhaps better than the base-10 metric system. If they had to spend their days converting between acres and square feet (43,560 of the latter go into the former, by the way), they might be more inclined to switch to metric.

trothamel 10y ago
One thousand paces in a mile, where each pace is two steps. A property of the US customary units is they tend to be more optimized for specific uses at a given scales, with little thought given to changing scales. Metric units make conversion easier, at the cost of often less suitable for use at scale - how many steps does it take to go a kilometer?
- CydeWeys 10y ago
  Unless you're in a military unit that is on the march, what does the number of steps in a kilometer matter for at all? And there is a huge natural variation in human stride length anyway -- you won't be surprised to know that the figure you mentioned for miles is an average that only applies for adult males of military height (i.e. not even shorter men). I think SI units are great for measuring distance at scale. Nanometers, micrometers, millimeters, centimeters, meters, and kilometers are all in common usage, and can represent pretty much anything you'd need. By contrast, it's imperial that has the real problems with use at scale, specifically down at tiny scales.
  - cbr 10y ago
    > adult males of military height (i.e. not even shorter men) Adult males of roman military height, so probably about 5'7" (170cm): http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/17072/average-height-of-ancient-roman-men-and-women http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/17072/average-hei...
  - blahedo 10y ago
    > Unless you're in a military unit that is on the march, what does the number of steps in a kilometer matter for at all? Playing Pokemon Go?
    - CydeWeys 10y ago
      I do play Pokemon Go, and I don't see what the number of steps has to do with anything. Nothing in the game is step-based; it's all kilometer based.
- pherq 10y ago
  A mile is no longer anything resembling 1000 paces, given that a standard imperial pace is 5 feet, rather than 5'3" and some change. Besides, it takes about 10 minutes of walking to go a kilometer. You don't count paces, do you?

trothamel 10y ago

One thousand paces in a mile, where each pace is two steps. A property of the US customary units is they tend to be more optimized for specific uses at a given scales, with little thought given to changing scales. Metric units make conversion easier, at the cost of often less suitable for use at scale - how many steps does it take to go a kilometer?

CydeWeys 10y ago
Unless you're in a military unit that is on the march, what does the number of steps in a kilometer matter for at all? And there is a huge natural variation in human stride length anyway -- you won't be surprised to know that the figure you mentioned for miles is an average that only applies for adult males of military height (i.e. not even shorter men). I think SI units are great for measuring distance at scale. Nanometers, micrometers, millimeters, centimeters, meters, and kilometers are all in common usage, and can represent pretty much anything you'd need. By contrast, it's imperial that has the real problems with use at scale, specifically down at tiny scales.
- cbr 10y ago
  > adult males of military height (i.e. not even shorter men) Adult males of roman military height, so probably about 5'7" (170cm): http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/17072/average-height-of-ancient-roman-men-and-women http://history.stackexchange.com/questions/17072/average-hei...
- blahedo 10y ago
  > Unless you're in a military unit that is on the march, what does the number of steps in a kilometer matter for at all? Playing Pokemon Go?
  - CydeWeys 10y ago
    I do play Pokemon Go, and I don't see what the number of steps has to do with anything. Nothing in the game is step-based; it's all kilometer based.
pherq 10y ago
A mile is no longer anything resembling 1000 paces, given that a standard imperial pace is 5 feet, rather than 5'3" and some change. Besides, it takes about 10 minutes of walking to go a kilometer. You don't count paces, do you?