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I find it very interesting that a large portion of the UK uses yards to measure distances shorter than a few kilometers. I saw a sign that read "Exit - 500 yard
by ikeyany 7y ago
I find it very interesting that a large portion of the UK uses yards to measure distances shorter than a few kilometers. I saw a sign that read "Exit - 500 yards" in London the other day.
- ak39 7y agoYou think that’s bad? Half the folks in this 2,500 mile radius are “laughing in their crores and lakhs”. Mildly infuriating for someone not used to arbitrary multiple names.
- fctorial 7y agoThat's still a 10 based system.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoWell, sort of. It's a sometimes-1000-but-usually-100 based system. That's a significant conflict with the standard English assumption of a 1000-based system (which appears in the metric system as the widespread use of kilounits, megaunits, milliunits...). Chinese uses a 10,000-based ("myriadic") system. Conversion is a gigantic pain. Calling these all "10-based" is more harmful, likely to confuse people, than helpful. You might consider the powers of ten that get their own unit in each system: English: 0, 1, 2, 3, 6, 9, 12, 15, ... Indian: 0, 1, 2, 3, 5, 7, 9, 11, 13, ... Chinese: 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 8, 12, 16, ...
- gus_massa 7y agoSpanish: 0, 1, 2, 3, 6, 12, 18, 24, ... More info: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Long_and_short_scales [I had to look up if the official definition of trillion is 10^18 or 10^24. It looks like a nice question to get a good irrelevant discussion for the coffeetime after lunch, if you can collect a few mathematicians in a Spanish speaking country.]
- narag 7y agoNot a Spanish specific thing really.
- CydeWeys 7y agoThey're different, and that is annoying, but it's hard to say exactly which is better or worse than any other. Indian seems to be the most useful, if you don't mind having a couple more words.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoBeing 10-based is already a big win (and it isn't harmful to say "10-based" as long as people know what it means). You need to only remember the name <-> power of 10 mapping, and the conversion amounts to adding or removing zeros. Beats having to multiply in your head by arbitrary, hard to remember fractional values.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoHave you ever tried converting from one system to the other in your head? It basically can't be done. Conversion is an easy process if you're willing to use pencil and paper, but at that point you're most of the way to using arbitrary conversion factors.
- TeMPOraL 7y agoI sometimes do between long and short scales (English uses one, Polish uses the other one). So to convert from Polish "bilion" to English, you go "bilion" -> 10^12 -> "trillion". Or, in the rarer case, "sextillion" -> 10^21 = 10^3 * 10^18 -> "tysiąc trylionów". Adding or subtracting the exponent of 10 is much easier than multiplying by random numbers (e.g. 5280 to get from miles to feet).
- samatman 7y agoIf you expand your definition of English to include the largest English-speaking population in the world, the existence of the Indian system leads to a nice property: one, ten, hundred, thousand, myriad, lakh, million, crore. We have a unique word for each power of ten up to 10^8. That's pretty neat.
- thaumasiotes 7y agoIt should be noted that though "myriad" comes from a Greek word for 10,000, and this is why the term "myriadic" is used to describe a number system based on powers of 10,000, the word itself is common in English with no meaning other than "a lot", and can't be interpreted to mean 10,000.
- samatman 7y agoSure it can! I just did! Words mean what we want them to mean. If I said there are five myriads of sand grains in an hourglass, what could this possibly mean but 50 thousand?
- thaumasiotes 7y ago‘I thought it looked a little queer. As I was saying, that seems to be done right—though I haven’t time to look it over thoroughly just now—and that shows that there are three hundred and sixty-four days when you might get un-birthday presents—’ ‘Certainly,’ said Alice. ‘And only one for birthday presents, you know. There’s glory for you!’ ‘I don’t know what you mean by “glory,”’ Alice said. Humpty Dumpty smiled contemptuously. ‘Of course you don’t—till I tell you. I meant “there’s a nice knock-down argument for you!”’ ‘But “glory” doesn’t mean “a nice knock-down argument,”’ Alice objected. ‘When I use a word,’ Humpty Dumpty said in rather a scornful tone, ‘it means just what I choose it to mean—neither more nor less.’ Of course, this is a famous example of an idiot who can't communicate. (Or, indeed, subtract 1 from 365.) Words mean what they mean by common agreement; your wish to use one inappropriately will not make that use appropriate. > If I said there are five myriads of sand grains in an hourglass, what could this possibly mean but 50 thousand? That you're given to poetic turns of phrase? That you're confused about how to refer to numbers in English? If I actually encountered this phrase, I'd lean heavily toward option one there. It would be much like saying the glass contained five times as many grains as the stars in the sky, instead of as many.
- ak39 7y agoIt's a 10 based system after the first 1'000. Hardly a "redeeming" feature considering numbers are always read/parsed right to left (Arabic) and given the first three digits separated for the thousands, the mind is already "trained" for the expected regular expression to parse. Booby trapped! 1 crore = 1,00,00,000 (written with accepted formatting). Which is 10'000'000 (formatted) - 10 million - for the rest of the world. Anyone used to the Western formatting will quickly get cockeyed seeing those numbers at a glance. I'd imagine it is just as jarring for the Indians seeing Western formats. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Indian_numbering_system
- bakery2k 7y agoThat shouldn't be surprising. Distances longer than a few kilometers are measured in miles.
- AsyncAwait 7y agoWhat? In countries using the metric system, distances of more than a few km are usually measured in tens/hundreds/thousands of kilometers. You don't just switch to a different system mid way.
- bakery2k 7y agoThe UK doesn't use the metric system for distances, at least when talking about travel. The only switching is from yards to miles.
- exergy 7y agoExactly. And that's why the UK is especially stupid with units. At least in the US they are consistently idiotic with Fahrenheit and Miles and BTUs and so on. In the UK, they understand what a kilogram is, but measure weight in stones anyway. Fucking stones! And then this thing with yards and miles. Utterly hopeless.
- saalweachter 7y agoUK went a little crazy sometime after the American colonies split. I mean, the US screwed up their fluid ounce / weight ounce so that a US fluid oz of water doesn't quite weight a US oz, but the UK redefined a hundredweight as 112 lbs to make it an even number of stones, and even though they kept their ounces correct, they redefined a pint to 20 ounces so now there's nowhere in the world a pint's a pound.
- iso1210 7y ago> now there's nowhere in the world a pint's a pound. was 20 years ago in our student bar. More like 3-4 pounds for a pint now, 5 in London
- Jedd 7y ago> ... the UK uses yards to measure distances shorter than a few kilometers. For the record, in the UK, and indeed most metric / english-speaking countries, it'll be metres (and kilometres). A metre is the ISO unit for distance. A meter is a device to measure things (not just distances).
- thinkingemote 7y agoFor the actual record, in the UK distances are measured in miles. This can be seen on road signage. Speeds are measured in miles per hour. This can be seen when driving a car, and also on road signage. It's basically a mix. Yards are not really used outside really by people, but you will find feet and inches being used (alongside metres and centimetres) often in commercial settings. Other examples of finding both things in the wild in use by people and companies in the UK: pints and litres. pounds and kilograms
- bakery2k 7y agoI think Jedd was commenting on the spelling of "meter" vs "metre".
- iso1210 7y agoIn the UK colloquial units are weird. Some units are imperial People's height in Feet People's weight in Stones+Pounds Beer in Pints (proper pints, not american tiny-pints) Roads in Miles Others are metric Temperature in C Milk in Litres Petrol in litres, but we also use miles/gallon Food in grams from shops, but oz when buying steak at a pub Bottles and Cans in ml Road distances on signs do tend to be yards rather than metres. Areas are often in acres, or square metres.
- globular-toast 7y agoMilk is in pints. Some are sold in litres because you get less but it kind of looks the same: 1L < 2 pints. But people generally talk about milk in pints.
- GordonS 7y agoIn the UK, yards are used almost exclusively for exit distance markers. I don't recall ever hearing/seeing them used for anything else in my entire life.
- Someone 7y agoI guess the rules nowadays use metric, but many parts of football fields originally were in yards/feet, and occasionally are still described that way (6-yard box, 18-yard box)
- globular-toast 7y agoUK roads are in imperial: inches, feet, yards, and miles. Not many people use yards for anything else.