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Interesting. I didn't know that. Do you do the conversion in your head, like 2 blocks = 160*2 meters, when someone use blocks in a conversation ? Just curious.

by tuan 2y ago

Interesting. I didn't know that. Do you do the conversion in your head, like 2 blocks = 160*2 meters, when someone use blocks in a conversation ? Just curious. also ... LOOK everyone I found an American who uses metric system as first choice in their post!!!

opinion-is-bad 2y ago
The Chicago grid is actually based on fractions of a mile (1/8 and 1/16 iirc), and when I lived there I would absolutely convert blocks to miles automatically when talking to people.
nemomarx 2y ago
I think it's more navigational? like I know "oh, I'd cross three streets and then be at the house" roughly, more than thinking about distance. It kinda equals effort to walk there and how often you'll stop for traffic more.
- kibwen 2y ago
  This right here. Nobody is converting the local average distance between streets in their heads into ordinary units of length and then converting. In ordinary conversation, to say "so-and-so is three blocks away" means you'd need to cross three streets to get there.
  - Izkata 2y ago
    And just like you have an idea of how big a mile or kilometer is without having to get out a tool to measure it, blocks tend to be pretty consistent within a given town or city, so "a block" has a similar rough intuitive distance.
aidenn0 2y ago
> Interesting. I didn't know that. Do you do the conversion in your head, like 2 blocks = 160*2 meters, when someone use blocks in a conversation ? Just curious. I do it explicitly some times, but mainly I do 2 blocks -> 5 minutes of walking. It's also useful to think in blocks because addresses here (and in many places in the US) go up/down by 100 for each block; so if I'm going from 12XX to 7XX (colloquially "The 1200 block to the 700 block") that's 5 blocks. > also ... LOOK everyone I found an American who uses metric system as first choice in their post!!! Meters are better than feet in every way even if you use miles for long distances. There are 5280 feet in a mile, but 1600 meters in a mile[1]. One of these numbers is far easier to deal with. As an aside, I wonder about using centimeters for height; In the US, if you look at a bell-curve for "self reported height of men" you see a drop off just below 6' (~183cm) and a huge spike at 6', distorting the curve[2]. Do you see similar distortions at 180 or 175cm in countries where the metric system is used? Given that far more men are "almost" 180cm or 175cm (in the US, 175 is average) are there more men "rounding up" on their heights in such places? Athletes, in particular, are incentivized to round-up, as scouts won't even look at you if you are "too short" and scouts like to use even numbers for cutoffs. 1: Technically 1609, but that makes an eighth of a mile estimate off by only about a meter, and the "mile run" event in US high-school track is actually 1600 meters. 2: The center of the bell-curve is also 2-3cm taller than measured heights of men in the US.
- tuan 2y ago
  > Do you see similar distortions at 180 or 175cm in countries where the metric system is used? No idea, but Vietnamese avg height is 168 cm :D I cannot find any sources published by our gov that has height distribution info.
- ruined 2y ago
  >Meters are better than feet in every way even if you use miles for long distances. There are 5280 feet in a mile, but 1600 meters in a mile[1]. One of these numbers is far easier to deal with. why have you forsaken the furlong, the chain, and the rod?
  - aidenn0 2y ago
    Two reasons: 1. To use all 3 would require remembering more conversion ratios 2. More people (even in the US) are familiar with meters than those units. I was not familiar with the Rod at all, which is the closest to meter in utility for discussing block lengths.
- smrq 2y ago
  I'm 69" tall, and I wonder if that would be a spike of its own if we didn't use a combination of inches and feet.
radley 2y ago
There is always a bit of a surprise to it, because it can apply equally to really long blocks in the suburbs or really short blocks in a town.
kube-system 2y ago
Usually when I use blocks, in the US, in conversation, it's with a city that both of us are familiar with. Any conversion to other units makes less sense in my head than the visual idea of what I know the city looks like outside.

by tuan 2y ago

opinion-is-bad 2y ago

The Chicago grid is actually based on fractions of a mile (1/8 and 1/16 iirc), and when I lived there I would absolutely convert blocks to miles automatically when talking to people.

nemomarx 2y ago

I think it's more navigational? like I know "oh, I'd cross three streets and then be at the house" roughly, more than thinking about distance. It kinda equals effort to walk there and how often you'll stop for traffic more.

kibwen 2y ago
This right here. Nobody is converting the local average distance between streets in their heads into ordinary units of length and then converting. In ordinary conversation, to say "so-and-so is three blocks away" means you'd need to cross three streets to get there.
- Izkata 2y ago
  And just like you have an idea of how big a mile or kilometer is without having to get out a tool to measure it, blocks tend to be pretty consistent within a given town or city, so "a block" has a similar rough intuitive distance.

aidenn0 2y ago

> Interesting. I didn't know that. Do you do the conversion in your head, like 2 blocks = 160*2 meters, when someone use blocks in a conversation ? Just curious. I do it explicitly some times, but mainly I do 2 blocks -> 5 minutes of walking. It's also useful to think in blocks because addresses here (and in many places in the US) go up/down by 100 for each block; so if I'm going from 12XX to 7XX (colloquially "The 1200 block to the 700 block") that's 5 blocks. > also ... LOOK everyone I found an American who uses metric system as first choice in their post!!! Meters are better than feet in every way even if you use miles for long distances. There are 5280 feet in a mile, but 1600 meters in a mile[1]. One of these numbers is far easier to deal with. As an aside, I wonder about using centimeters for height; In the US, if you look at a bell-curve for "self reported height of men" you see a drop off just below 6' (~183cm) and a huge spike at 6', distorting the curve[2]. Do you see similar distortions at 180 or 175cm in countries where the metric system is used? Given that far more men are "almost" 180cm or 175cm (in the US, 175 is average) are there more men "rounding up" on their heights in such places? Athletes, in particular, are incentivized to round-up, as scouts won't even look at you if you are "too short" and scouts like to use even numbers for cutoffs. 1: Technically 1609, but that makes an eighth of a mile estimate off by only about a meter, and the "mile run" event in US high-school track is actually 1600 meters. 2: The center of the bell-curve is also 2-3cm taller than measured heights of men in the US.

tuan 2y ago
> Do you see similar distortions at 180 or 175cm in countries where the metric system is used? No idea, but Vietnamese avg height is 168 cm :D I cannot find any sources published by our gov that has height distribution info.
ruined 2y ago
>Meters are better than feet in every way even if you use miles for long distances. There are 5280 feet in a mile, but 1600 meters in a mile[1]. One of these numbers is far easier to deal with. why have you forsaken the furlong, the chain, and the rod?
- aidenn0 2y ago
  Two reasons: 1. To use all 3 would require remembering more conversion ratios 2. More people (even in the US) are familiar with meters than those units. I was not familiar with the Rod at all, which is the closest to meter in utility for discussing block lengths.
smrq 2y ago
I'm 69" tall, and I wonder if that would be a spike of its own if we didn't use a combination of inches and feet.

radley 2y ago

There is always a bit of a surprise to it, because it can apply equally to really long blocks in the suburbs or really short blocks in a town.

kube-system 2y ago

Usually when I use blocks, in the US, in conversation, it's with a city that both of us are familiar with. Any conversion to other units makes less sense in my head than the visual idea of what I know the city looks like outside.