>> But when was the last time that came in handy? Every time I need to add or subtract two measurements. Quick: What is 2' 3 5/8" plus or minus 1' 2 19/32"?

>> But when was the last time that came in handy? Every time I need to add or subtract two measurements. Quick: What is 2' 3 5/8" plus or minus 1' 2 19/32"? or What is 701.7 mm plus or minus 370.7 mm? Seriously I work with both everyday, and while I grew up with inches & feet and I still intuitively know how deep two feet of snow is better than 61 cm of snow, I'm really starting to hate the US measurements, and use metric whenever I can. Also, whenever we deal with things from the rest of the world, it becomes a mashup of US and metric measurements. The US almost converted to metric in the 1970s, but Nixon squashed it, basically on the complaints of what are surely the ancestors of modern US right wing know-nothings who didn't like "foreign" stuff. Looking at it historically, the fractions made a lot of sense when things were more coarse, and the ability to split things into even sections, 1/2, 1/3, 1/4... was more common. OTOH, Metric was designed for doing calculations - we already use the decimal system for all other math, so we should design a measuring system to use the same calculation system. It really does work better.