5 ms·
I was born 48 years ago. The advantage is not having to remember all those funny constants and being able to do math in your head that actually makes sense? O
by rgj 5y ago
I was born 48 years ago.
The advantage is not having to remember all those funny constants and being able to do math in your head that actually makes sense?
Or more important, to be able to write an article that the entire planet can just read without 95% of them (everybody outside the US, UK and Myanmar) having to resort to Google to find out if those numbers are impressive or not?
- shpx 5y agoadd Canada and you've named like a fifth or a quarter of all English speakers
- rgj 5y agoGood addition / correction. So the amount of people that is unable to follow the article without too much effort went down from 95% to 80% of the audience.
- pietherr 5y agoFunny how all these proponents of SI units state their age in years instead of seconds :)
- Kbelicius 5y agoIt isn't funny because the GP doesn't want SI units to be used because they are a standard but because 95% of the world can understand them. I'm certain that more than 95% of people understand years.
- wackro 5y agoAnd some will never understand humour either
- Kbelicius 5y agoThis sounds like it is directed at me and I don't see why. Humor is often dependent on context. Some jokes are funny in some situations and not in others. The above joke is not funny here since it entirely misses the context in which it should be used.
- jtc331 5y agoHumor also often has a lot of contextual flex, which is intentional misinterpretation (e.g., unintentional double meaning) is often humorous. Just laugh at the joke.
- ragebol 5y agoPhsh, I know a guy that celebrated turning a billion seconds old. Brought pie and everything
- cromka 5y agoI think the point was that horsepower is widely understandable and preferred in Europe as a unit of an engine power, despite otherwise using the SI units.
- chronogram 5y agoHorsepower is different though, you have imperial horsepower and metric horsepower (and many more). Both are not the same and neither is a round 750 watts. For the last years I’ve mostly seen watts being used in NL, but it’s been ages since I saw a fast and furious movie or a top gear show. The car sellers use kW and often also, I assume metric, horsepower.
- _0ffh 5y ago>The advantage is not having to remember all those funny constants This, very much! I've done a ton of physical simulation code in my life. Whenever some newb or student comes to me for the first time with their simulation code that mysteriously doesn't work, in 90% of cases they stupidly didn't stick to SI and forked up some unit conversion, or mutiple. I tell the to keep it in SI and never let me see them make that mistake again. (Only exception is simple 1-to-1 unit conversions of parameters and results, when some stupid interface definition demands it that can't easily be changed.)