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Meters vs feet is an obvious choice but Fahrenheit actually makes a lot of sense for day to day use. 0-100 (0 being the coldest most people regularly experienc

Meters vs feet is an obvious choice but Fahrenheit actually makes a lot of sense for day to day use. 0-100 (0 being the coldest most people regularly experience, 100 the hottest) maps well to human senses while Celsius has half the precision and the same range is an unintuitive -17 to 37. Celsius is obviously far superior for thermodynamics calculations but not many of us do that regularly. I'm not saying we shouldn't have switched over decades ago, but I think it's good to understand the context of such decisions.

deleted 8y ago
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int_19h 8y ago
> and the same range is an unintuitive -17 to 37 For starters, if you arbitrarily round Fahreinheit numbers up or down (which you did to get that 0-100 range), you need to do the same with Celsius. So it'd be -20-40, which is a lot less un-intuitive. But also, that this range is what "most people regularly experience" is also rather arbitrary. I have regularly experienced winters below -20 C, for example, but I've only seen +40 C once. The truth is, most people will experience a range of temperatures that's not going to be nice and round numbers in either scale, so why fixate on it?
- isostatic 8y ago
  -50 to 50 seems like the general scale for temperature to me
- AWildC182 8y ago
  I should add the caveat *in the United States. It would obviously be a pretty dumb comparison for Singapore or Reykjavík. I'd also add that the 10s in Fahrenheit also make nice comfort delimiters. 20 is frigid, 30 is ~freezing, 40 is cold, 50 is cool, 60 is warm, 70 is room temp, 80 is hot, 90 is excessively hot, 100 is oppressive. Again, obviously you can do the same thing with the 5s in Celsius but it does work nicely for the average person. I'm not really saying this is better than Celsius, just that it's understandable why it's not changing as quickly as some would like. I will say that the industries that have specific reason switched fairly quickly. For instance, aviation uses feet, inHg, statute+nautical miles but does temperature in Celsius because pilots overwhelmingly care about whether it's above or below freezing outside.
billfruit 8y ago
I think it is now a question of whether the US should follow what the rest of the world follows or not. In the interest of avoiding miscommunication it better for US to change.
- toasterlovin 8y ago
  As a counterpoint, one of my favorite things about US (and, really, Anglo) culture is that we're totally okay with things not being neat and tidy. Just take a look at English. It's a beautiful mess of a language.

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int_19h 8y ago

> and the same range is an unintuitive -17 to 37 For starters, if you arbitrarily round Fahreinheit numbers up or down (which you did to get that 0-100 range), you need to do the same with Celsius. So it'd be -20-40, which is a lot less un-intuitive. But also, that this range is what "most people regularly experience" is also rather arbitrary. I have regularly experienced winters below -20 C, for example, but I've only seen +40 C once. The truth is, most people will experience a range of temperatures that's not going to be nice and round numbers in either scale, so why fixate on it?

isostatic 8y ago
-50 to 50 seems like the general scale for temperature to me
AWildC182 8y ago
I should add the caveat *in the United States. It would obviously be a pretty dumb comparison for Singapore or Reykjavík. I'd also add that the 10s in Fahrenheit also make nice comfort delimiters. 20 is frigid, 30 is ~freezing, 40 is cold, 50 is cool, 60 is warm, 70 is room temp, 80 is hot, 90 is excessively hot, 100 is oppressive. Again, obviously you can do the same thing with the 5s in Celsius but it does work nicely for the average person. I'm not really saying this is better than Celsius, just that it's understandable why it's not changing as quickly as some would like. I will say that the industries that have specific reason switched fairly quickly. For instance, aviation uses feet, inHg, statute+nautical miles but does temperature in Celsius because pilots overwhelmingly care about whether it's above or below freezing outside.

billfruit 8y ago

I think it is now a question of whether the US should follow what the rest of the world follows or not. In the interest of avoiding miscommunication it better for US to change.

toasterlovin 8y ago
As a counterpoint, one of my favorite things about US (and, really, Anglo) culture is that we're totally okay with things not being neat and tidy. Just take a look at English. It's a beautiful mess of a language.