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A difficulty that I find is that metric as commonly used is more awkward for estimating. For example, I find that metric distance as commonly used doesn't have

A difficulty that I find is that metric as commonly used is more awkward for estimating. For example, I find that metric distance as commonly used doesn't have a good equivalent to feet for working with medium lengths. By "as commonly used" I mean that, while I could theoretically use decameters, in practice average people seem to only use millimeters, centimeters, meters, and kilometers. That makes it difficult for me to estimate medium lengths in metric. For example, it's awkward to describe someone as 1.83 meters or 183 centimeters tall. It is much easier to describe them as 6 feet 2 inches. To a somewhat lesser degree, the same seems to be true for volume. In practice people only seem to use milliliters and liters. That leaves me with no good equivalent to cups or gallons.

spoiler 4y ago
> For example, it's awkward to describe someone as 1.83 meters or 183 centimeters tall. It is much easier to describe them as 6 feet 2 inches. Lol, funny how I'm the exact opposite. When someone says their height in meters I have a pretty good idea of their height, where as for feet, I always have to do maths in my head first. Same for volumes I wonder if it's just a matter of better familiarity with one system over the other
kwanbix 4y ago
Why would you want to describe somebody as 183 centimeters tall? Even if there is a good reason, it is not a problem at all. It is very easy to understand you mean 1.83 meters. Same way you don't tell the height of a person in inches alone, you normally don't tell it in centimeters.
pier25 4y ago
> It is much easier to describe them as 6 feet 2 inches. That's purely subjective. I'm from Europe and even though I'm a bit familiar with imperial units, I almost always need to use Google to convert feet and inches to metric. And no one is going to convince me that fractional stuff like 3/16 inches is easier than 4.7mm.
maartenh 4y ago
It's what you're used to. Cups and gallons are confusing to me! In some of my Dutch cook book, there are mentions of cups. But mostly as a relative unit; add one cup of X, two cups of Y. For absolute amounts, the metrics system just makes more sense, as it nearly combines the different quantities without weird conversion constants. Note that in medical or scientific environments, centiliters are actually used. But then again, we still use milimiter-mercury as a unit in medicine too ;) [0] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millimetre_of_mercury https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millimetre_of_mercury
laserdancepony 4y ago
At least metric recipes are actually reproducible, not like the tablespoons and cups compounding rounding errors and estimates of the imperial “system”.
- Turing_Machine 4y ago
  The imperial system is yet a third system, formerly used in the British Empire and a few other countries. There are important differences between it and the U.S. customary system. For instance, the imperial gallon is about 4.5 liters, while the U.S. gallon is only about 3.78 liters. The imperial system used to be much worse... there were separate gallons for wine, ale, grain, etc. About the only vestige of this is in barrels, where a barrel of beer is not the same size as a barrel of oil. There's also an avoirdupois system, which is similar, but once again, not identical, with the imperial and U.S. systems, and the troy system used for precious metals and things of that nature.
grujicd 4y ago
How do you deal with 1" resolution for person's height? It seems too huge a difference. 2.5cm higher is maybe not that important once you're not teenager any more, but it is still quite visible. Also, deciliter is used a lot for volume, especially for drinks. Everyone in Serbia knows that 0.5dl of rakija (brandy) is the way to go and when bar serves 0.3dl they don't respect traditional values :) Also, 2dl is standard cup size and that's intuitive size when we have to estimate deciliter or two for cooking etc.
- sbaiddn 4y ago
  No one, except tailors and very insecure men, cares about anyone's height to within an inch.
sbaiddn 4y ago
I grew up with metric and I 100% agree that metric is missing a foot sized unit of measurement. Also the meter, mm, and km are cool, but the cm is just the wrong size. Too small.
Jensson 4y ago
> while I could theoretically use decameters, in practice average people seem to only use Everyone uses decimeters where I'm from, it isn't strange at all and everyone understands it. People use mm, cm, dm, m or km depending on what fits best, that gives you a much more fine grained set of lengths to talk about and it is trivial to convert between them so people don't have to think about it. Maybe countries that doesn't use metric in everyday life just teaches you cm and m, but there is no reason to just stay with those. The confusion is maybe that we don't mix units, you don't say "1 meter 8 decimeters and 3 centimeters", you just use one, and in those since the accuracy is in centimetetrs you just use centimeters, or meters straight. But if you talk about a distance of around 30 centimeters people just say 3 decimeters, and since everyone has worked a lot with those before they take their mental decimeter times 3 and they know the length.
timbit42 4y ago
You could say 1 meter and 83 centimeters, or if you prefer, 1 meter, 8 decimeters and 3 centimeters. If you really want to complain about metric, complain that it is base 10 instead of base 12. Twelve is evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4 and 6 making dividing into fifths, quarters, thirds or halves easier, while decimal is only divisible by 2 and 5, which base twelve already does and more and more difficult to divide into quarters and thirds. This is why clocks have 12 hours per half day instead of 10.

spoiler 4y ago

> For example, it's awkward to describe someone as 1.83 meters or 183 centimeters tall. It is much easier to describe them as 6 feet 2 inches. Lol, funny how I'm the exact opposite. When someone says their height in meters I have a pretty good idea of their height, where as for feet, I always have to do maths in my head first. Same for volumes I wonder if it's just a matter of better familiarity with one system over the other

kwanbix 4y ago

Why would you want to describe somebody as 183 centimeters tall? Even if there is a good reason, it is not a problem at all. It is very easy to understand you mean 1.83 meters. Same way you don't tell the height of a person in inches alone, you normally don't tell it in centimeters.

pier25 4y ago

> It is much easier to describe them as 6 feet 2 inches. That's purely subjective. I'm from Europe and even though I'm a bit familiar with imperial units, I almost always need to use Google to convert feet and inches to metric. And no one is going to convince me that fractional stuff like 3/16 inches is easier than 4.7mm.

maartenh 4y ago

It's what you're used to. Cups and gallons are confusing to me! In some of my Dutch cook book, there are mentions of cups. But mostly as a relative unit; add one cup of X, two cups of Y. For absolute amounts, the metrics system just makes more sense, as it nearly combines the different quantities without weird conversion constants. Note that in medical or scientific environments, centiliters are actually used. But then again, we still use milimiter-mercury as a unit in medicine too ;) [0] [0] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millimetre_of_mercury https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Millimetre_of_mercury

laserdancepony 4y ago

At least metric recipes are actually reproducible, not like the tablespoons and cups compounding rounding errors and estimates of the imperial “system”.

Turing_Machine 4y ago
The imperial system is yet a third system, formerly used in the British Empire and a few other countries. There are important differences between it and the U.S. customary system. For instance, the imperial gallon is about 4.5 liters, while the U.S. gallon is only about 3.78 liters. The imperial system used to be much worse... there were separate gallons for wine, ale, grain, etc. About the only vestige of this is in barrels, where a barrel of beer is not the same size as a barrel of oil. There's also an avoirdupois system, which is similar, but once again, not identical, with the imperial and U.S. systems, and the troy system used for precious metals and things of that nature.

grujicd 4y ago

How do you deal with 1" resolution for person's height? It seems too huge a difference. 2.5cm higher is maybe not that important once you're not teenager any more, but it is still quite visible. Also, deciliter is used a lot for volume, especially for drinks. Everyone in Serbia knows that 0.5dl of rakija (brandy) is the way to go and when bar serves 0.3dl they don't respect traditional values :) Also, 2dl is standard cup size and that's intuitive size when we have to estimate deciliter or two for cooking etc.

sbaiddn 4y ago
No one, except tailors and very insecure men, cares about anyone's height to within an inch.

sbaiddn 4y ago

I grew up with metric and I 100% agree that metric is missing a foot sized unit of measurement. Also the meter, mm, and km are cool, but the cm is just the wrong size. Too small.

Jensson 4y ago

> while I could theoretically use decameters, in practice average people seem to only use Everyone uses decimeters where I'm from, it isn't strange at all and everyone understands it. People use mm, cm, dm, m or km depending on what fits best, that gives you a much more fine grained set of lengths to talk about and it is trivial to convert between them so people don't have to think about it. Maybe countries that doesn't use metric in everyday life just teaches you cm and m, but there is no reason to just stay with those. The confusion is maybe that we don't mix units, you don't say "1 meter 8 decimeters and 3 centimeters", you just use one, and in those since the accuracy is in centimetetrs you just use centimeters, or meters straight. But if you talk about a distance of around 30 centimeters people just say 3 decimeters, and since everyone has worked a lot with those before they take their mental decimeter times 3 and they know the length.

timbit42 4y ago

You could say 1 meter and 83 centimeters, or if you prefer, 1 meter, 8 decimeters and 3 centimeters. If you really want to complain about metric, complain that it is base 10 instead of base 12. Twelve is evenly divisible by 2, 3, 4 and 6 making dividing into fifths, quarters, thirds or halves easier, while decimal is only divisible by 2 and 5, which base twelve already does and more and more difficult to divide into quarters and thirds. This is why clocks have 12 hours per half day instead of 10.