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Something I've considered recently is the case of estimating heighth (or any length) in customary vs. metric. In the US, if I'm describing someone, perhaps to
by ajb1 8y ago
Something I've considered recently is the case of estimating heighth (or any length) in customary vs. metric.
In the US, if I'm describing someone, perhaps to a police officer, I can fairly easily conceptualize the difference between 5ft, 5ft 6in, 6ft, or even smaller degrees of difference.
Though I'm certain this is likely just a result of me having grown up with the customary system, it seems like it would be more difficult (or at least more tedious) to estimate the heighth of a person using meters, given that most humans are in the 1.5-1.8m range (by my estimation). Especially when looking only at one gender, the range of possible heights is quite small in meters, requiring more precision to describe.
For example, I can reliably understand and visualize the difference between 5'0" and 5'4".
I'm curious for those in the rest of the world - can you meaningfully visualize the difference between 1.5m and 1.6m? Or perhaps 1.55m and 1.58m?
- stephen_g 8y agoIf you use appropriate units, sure. Height of people is commonly measured in centimetres, not metres. Yes, one can easily estimate 150, 155, 160 etc. to within ten centimetres or so.
- hamilyon2 8y agoWell, sure we can. It is a matter of practice, like everything else
- llukas 8y agoThis is only due to you being used to certain units. I was raised in EU using Celsius scale and can relate to full scale. In US I can relate only to 70-80 range as this is what I consciously experienced (ie. adjusting air conditioning). I still need to convert Fahrenheit to Celsius for anything outside of that range. Also imperial sucks utterly as metric allows almost seamless exchange of mass measurements with volume for of pretty much anything in the kitchen (1g of water is roughly 1cm^3, almost everything we eat is very close in density to water).