6 ms·

The survey foot is, from what I could tell in the article, already officially defined in meters. It seems that the real complaint about how the US is backward

by mbg721 4y ago

The survey foot is, from what I could tell in the article, already officially defined in meters. It seems that the real complaint about how the US is backward is that we use fractions of whole numbers. The horror!

c7b 4y ago
Mathematically, both are fractions of whole numbers (or decimals - the notation makes no difference). The problem is that they're different - which is a problem if you confuse them.
xwolfi 4y ago
Not it's more you use body part names that sound funny as unit of measurement. Like it sound backward to say stuff like "I'm 5 feet tall, but I can see as far as 20 inches! Maybe I can also count up to twenty teeth but I have only 5 toenails of time remaining". Ok I exagerated a bit, but to the rest of the world that's how silly this all sound lol Isnt it weird we all measure prices in USD between non US people when we need to compare price across countries, but the US cant use the meter, a unit so old and basic they re the one country left without it...
- mbg721 4y ago
  Pfft, who names a currency after a German valley?? Those hilarious idiots...
- permo-w 4y ago
  there are other countries that still use imperial. Britain officially uses metric, but there’s a lot of imperial in common use. most people will tell you their height in feet and inches and their weight in stones and pounds. you buy pints at the pub and older generations will probably give you estimates of distance in miles apparently also Liberia - a country set up by Americans - and Myanmar still use imperial
- schoen 4y ago
  I hope the U.S. will adopt the metric system in day-to-day life (I used to be a member of the U.S. Metric Association), so I'm not disputing your larger point, but I can't think of anything but the foot that's named after a body part. The commonly-used U.S. customary units are inch, foot, yard, mile (distance); ounce, pound, ton (mass); teaspoon, tablespoon, ounce, cup, pint, quart, gallon (volume). I only see the foot there as a body part. (Also for time the hour, minute, day, week, month, and year are not based on powers of ten, but the U.S. does share these and the SI second with the rest of the world.) There are lots more weird and obscure U.S. customary units that are rarely used by most people, like for length (link, chain, rod, furlong, league), but I'm still not thinking of anything else named after a body part!
  - Someone 4y ago
    An obscure one is the fingertip unit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_tip_unit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_tip_unit) I wouldn’t call that a unit, though, as it is scales with the size of the patient’s fingertip (https://dermnetnz.org/topics/fingertip-unit https://dermnetnz.org/topics/fingertip-unit).
  - eesmith 4y ago
    hogshead? Wikipedia-ing around, I knew about "hand" for measuring the height of horses, and had heard of "finger" in the context of "a finger of whiskey". It was apparently a unit of measurement too. The "digit" Wikipedia entry mentions "finger (7/6 digit), palm (4 digits), hand (16/3 digits), shaftment (8 digits), span (12 digits), cubit (24 digits) and ell (60 digits)" as body-part-based measures - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digit_(unit)#Britain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digit_(unit)#Britain
    - schoen 4y ago
      That is definitely a fair list of body-based customary units; thanks for pointing those out!
  - hulitu 4y ago
    Ton ? Long ton or short ton ?
- c3534l 4y ago
  Not sure how its relevat anyway, but that doesn't sound silly to me. Why would have a concrete, relatable equivalent be a bad thing?
  - DocTomoe 4y ago
    It's a bad thing because as it turns out, feet are all kinds of sizes, vary over time both in individuals and in groups, and may have different sizes or averages in different geographical areas. Even the unit foot is different between Indian survey feet, US survey feet, and apparently the international foot. To add extra confusion, there's the ISO 2848's "metric foot" which is exactly 30 cm, which supercedes former "metric feet" of different lengths. If you take old feet into account, a feet can be anywhere between 25 cm and 33.5 cm. What a mess! A standard foot corresponds to EU shoe size 48 - woe be upon the person who goes shoe-shopping with thus Goliath feet. Then there's the randomness on how super- and subunits seem to be randomly defined (1 foot apparently is a third of a yard (which is a stupid unit name in itself, because otherwise, yard defines an area, which is much larger than around a meter), but 12 inches. This being a stupid situation is something Europe has understood already in the 18th century, which led to unifying to rational - metric and eventually SI - units.
    - kps 4y ago
      > yard (which is a stupid unit name in itself, because otherwise, yard defines an area I assume you're referring to an enclosed plot of land. That has a different etymology than the unit, which comes from a word meaning stick or staff.
    - c3534l 4y ago
      Those are problems that have nothing to do with having measurements that can be imagined with concrete analogies. Nobody uses "feet" to mean literally their personal feet. A foot is a standardized unit of measure about the size of a foot. I have no problem with that, that's not an absurd thing to do.
- adrianmonk 4y ago
  Yes, the US should move to the metric system. There are many reasons, but etymology isn't one of them.
yuubi 4y ago
the inch changed in 1959 from exactly 1/39.37 m to exactly 2.54 cm; the survey foot is for compatibility with large-scale measurements based on old inches.
- mbg721 4y ago
  So that's why my windows are leaky! I knew there had to be a reason.
8ytecoder 4y ago
Do you know why that’s popular in the US? I’m so used to the decimal point notation that when hear “the Dow Jones index dropped by one hundred thirty three or one-tenth of a percentage point” on NPR it just throws me off. “Point one percent” is just so much easier to visualize the number. It feels unnecessarily complicated to use the fractional system. Same with the “the time right now is three past five” vs “it’s oh-three-oh-five or three-oh-five pm”.
- nine_k 4y ago
  It's a tradition. The US is more traditional than most of Europe. Its political system did not change for nearly 250 years, and the last major war on its territory ended in 1865. Europe had many more wars during a comparable period, and much more political reorganization. It had many more chances to scrap an old system and enforce a new system. The US federal government won't enforce a metric system, or it would likely be overstepping its mandate. So, if everyone from your grand-grandfather to your dad use measures like 3/8 and not 0.375, feet and inches instead of meters and centimeters, etc, you naturally use them, too. All the books have them. All the public displays have them. There is just too much inertia that makes everyone keep using them. You of course can use metric units (most rulers in my home have both inches and mm, every bottle or carton has the volume in oz/gal and ml), 24-hour clock scale (call it "military time"), Celsius temperature scale, etc. If you do science, you most likely use metric units. The metric system coexists with the imperial system, but does not dominate over it.
  - School-Cotton 4y ago
    I do think decimal measurements have become more popular over time, though, even in areas where we haven’t switched to metric. I’m more likely to say something weighs 1.5 pounds than one pound, eight ounces. (On the other hand, we absolutely still use feet and inches ubiquitously).
- Dalewyn 4y ago
  There are situations where fractions are easier and more importantly more accurate than decimals. For example, measuring a third of something in decimals would be 0.333... while in fractions that would be 1/3. Fractions are particularly popular in the construction industries for this reason, where base 12 math will toss out anyone who tries to be metric and base 10.
nayuki 4y ago
When redefining traditional measuring units into metric, it is generally preferred that the traditional unit equals a terminating decimal number in metric. For example, 1 inch = 25.4 mm exactly. This helps with transitioning to metric because old specifications can be translated to metric without introducing fractions or repeating decimals. The fact that the survey inch is exactly 100/3937 metres violates this property and makes it more cumbersome to work with in metric.
nephanth 4y ago
> fractions of whole numbers. The horror! I mean you have to either handle numerical error or rational numbers. In any case fron a numerical analysis pov, it's a pain

by mbg721 4y ago

c7b 4y ago

Mathematically, both are fractions of whole numbers (or decimals - the notation makes no difference). The problem is that they're different - which is a problem if you confuse them.

xwolfi 4y ago

Not it's more you use body part names that sound funny as unit of measurement. Like it sound backward to say stuff like "I'm 5 feet tall, but I can see as far as 20 inches! Maybe I can also count up to twenty teeth but I have only 5 toenails of time remaining". Ok I exagerated a bit, but to the rest of the world that's how silly this all sound lol Isnt it weird we all measure prices in USD between non US people when we need to compare price across countries, but the US cant use the meter, a unit so old and basic they re the one country left without it...

mbg721 4y ago
Pfft, who names a currency after a German valley?? Those hilarious idiots...
permo-w 4y ago
there are other countries that still use imperial. Britain officially uses metric, but there’s a lot of imperial in common use. most people will tell you their height in feet and inches and their weight in stones and pounds. you buy pints at the pub and older generations will probably give you estimates of distance in miles apparently also Liberia - a country set up by Americans - and Myanmar still use imperial
schoen 4y ago
I hope the U.S. will adopt the metric system in day-to-day life (I used to be a member of the U.S. Metric Association), so I'm not disputing your larger point, but I can't think of anything but the foot that's named after a body part. The commonly-used U.S. customary units are inch, foot, yard, mile (distance); ounce, pound, ton (mass); teaspoon, tablespoon, ounce, cup, pint, quart, gallon (volume). I only see the foot there as a body part. (Also for time the hour, minute, day, week, month, and year are not based on powers of ten, but the U.S. does share these and the SI second with the rest of the world.) There are lots more weird and obscure U.S. customary units that are rarely used by most people, like for length (link, chain, rod, furlong, league), but I'm still not thinking of anything else named after a body part!
- Someone 4y ago
  An obscure one is the fingertip unit (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_tip_unit https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finger_tip_unit) I wouldn’t call that a unit, though, as it is scales with the size of the patient’s fingertip (https://dermnetnz.org/topics/fingertip-unit https://dermnetnz.org/topics/fingertip-unit).
- eesmith 4y ago
  hogshead? Wikipedia-ing around, I knew about "hand" for measuring the height of horses, and had heard of "finger" in the context of "a finger of whiskey". It was apparently a unit of measurement too. The "digit" Wikipedia entry mentions "finger (7/6 digit), palm (4 digits), hand (16/3 digits), shaftment (8 digits), span (12 digits), cubit (24 digits) and ell (60 digits)" as body-part-based measures - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digit_(unit)#Britain https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Digit_(unit)#Britain
  - schoen 4y ago
    That is definitely a fair list of body-based customary units; thanks for pointing those out!
- hulitu 4y ago
  Ton ? Long ton or short ton ?
c3534l 4y ago
Not sure how its relevat anyway, but that doesn't sound silly to me. Why would have a concrete, relatable equivalent be a bad thing?
- DocTomoe 4y ago
  It's a bad thing because as it turns out, feet are all kinds of sizes, vary over time both in individuals and in groups, and may have different sizes or averages in different geographical areas. Even the unit foot is different between Indian survey feet, US survey feet, and apparently the international foot. To add extra confusion, there's the ISO 2848's "metric foot" which is exactly 30 cm, which supercedes former "metric feet" of different lengths. If you take old feet into account, a feet can be anywhere between 25 cm and 33.5 cm. What a mess! A standard foot corresponds to EU shoe size 48 - woe be upon the person who goes shoe-shopping with thus Goliath feet. Then there's the randomness on how super- and subunits seem to be randomly defined (1 foot apparently is a third of a yard (which is a stupid unit name in itself, because otherwise, yard defines an area, which is much larger than around a meter), but 12 inches. This being a stupid situation is something Europe has understood already in the 18th century, which led to unifying to rational - metric and eventually SI - units.
  - kps 4y ago
    > yard (which is a stupid unit name in itself, because otherwise, yard defines an area I assume you're referring to an enclosed plot of land. That has a different etymology than the unit, which comes from a word meaning stick or staff.
  - c3534l 4y ago
    Those are problems that have nothing to do with having measurements that can be imagined with concrete analogies. Nobody uses "feet" to mean literally their personal feet. A foot is a standardized unit of measure about the size of a foot. I have no problem with that, that's not an absurd thing to do.
adrianmonk 4y ago
Yes, the US should move to the metric system. There are many reasons, but etymology isn't one of them.

yuubi 4y ago

the inch changed in 1959 from exactly 1/39.37 m to exactly 2.54 cm; the survey foot is for compatibility with large-scale measurements based on old inches.

mbg721 4y ago
So that's why my windows are leaky! I knew there had to be a reason.

8ytecoder 4y ago

Do you know why that’s popular in the US? I’m so used to the decimal point notation that when hear “the Dow Jones index dropped by one hundred thirty three or one-tenth of a percentage point” on NPR it just throws me off. “Point one percent” is just so much easier to visualize the number. It feels unnecessarily complicated to use the fractional system. Same with the “the time right now is three past five” vs “it’s oh-three-oh-five or three-oh-five pm”.

nine_k 4y ago
It's a tradition. The US is more traditional than most of Europe. Its political system did not change for nearly 250 years, and the last major war on its territory ended in 1865. Europe had many more wars during a comparable period, and much more political reorganization. It had many more chances to scrap an old system and enforce a new system. The US federal government won't enforce a metric system, or it would likely be overstepping its mandate. So, if everyone from your grand-grandfather to your dad use measures like 3/8 and not 0.375, feet and inches instead of meters and centimeters, etc, you naturally use them, too. All the books have them. All the public displays have them. There is just too much inertia that makes everyone keep using them. You of course can use metric units (most rulers in my home have both inches and mm, every bottle or carton has the volume in oz/gal and ml), 24-hour clock scale (call it "military time"), Celsius temperature scale, etc. If you do science, you most likely use metric units. The metric system coexists with the imperial system, but does not dominate over it.
- School-Cotton 4y ago
  I do think decimal measurements have become more popular over time, though, even in areas where we haven’t switched to metric. I’m more likely to say something weighs 1.5 pounds than one pound, eight ounces. (On the other hand, we absolutely still use feet and inches ubiquitously).
Dalewyn 4y ago
There are situations where fractions are easier and more importantly more accurate than decimals. For example, measuring a third of something in decimals would be 0.333... while in fractions that would be 1/3. Fractions are particularly popular in the construction industries for this reason, where base 12 math will toss out anyone who tries to be metric and base 10.

nayuki 4y ago

When redefining traditional measuring units into metric, it is generally preferred that the traditional unit equals a terminating decimal number in metric. For example, 1 inch = 25.4 mm exactly. This helps with transitioning to metric because old specifications can be translated to metric without introducing fractions or repeating decimals. The fact that the survey inch is exactly 100/3937 metres violates this property and makes it more cumbersome to work with in metric.

nephanth 4y ago

> fractions of whole numbers. The horror! I mean you have to either handle numerical error or rational numbers. In any case fron a numerical analysis pov, it's a pain