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The problem is that Fahrenheit is a bit more convenient for describing the weather. Inches and feet are a bit more convenient for measuring human scale things a

The problem is that Fahrenheit is a bit more convenient for describing the weather. Inches and feet are a bit more convenient for measuring human scale things and for being easily divisible by more numbers. And we’re used to the rest of it. Unless someone comes along and forces it on you, for the average person, there’s not enough incentive to switch.

plaguna 9mo ago
"Fahrenheit is a bit more convenient for describing the weather" - you might need to show us an example here that is not biased. Because to me, Celsius is a bit more convenient for describing the weather.
- bluGill 9mo ago
  It is what you are used to for both of you. you could make your own measurement system and it would work fine once you get used to it - until you need to communicate with someone else who isn't used to it.
  - ghaff 9mo ago
    A big part of it is certainly what you're used to. The other part, which I'm sympathetic to, is that for human scale everyday things, Fahrenheit 0 degrees lines up with really darned cold, 100 degrees with really hot outside of an oven, and the degree size is about twice as granular as Celsius. And while Celsius degree size is indeed widely used in engineering calculations, you're often using Kelvin as the absolute temperature scale. (Which does use Celsius degree increments of course.)
    - bryanlarsen 9mo ago
      > and the degree size is about twice as granular as Celsius. And then they'll argue that the inch is more convenient than the centimeter because it's twice as large. That's backwards. Fractions of an inch are in far more common usage than fractions of a centigrade. Ideal might be both a smaller inch and a smaller centigrade, but between the two a smaller inch is more helpful than a smaller centigrade.
    - graemep 9mo ago
      0 lines up with freezing point is very intuitive.
      - bluGill 9mo ago
        Perhaps, but useless for most purposes. You need to know how think of a coat to wear and you need a mental map from some number to some coat. It doesn't matter what the scale is, just that you have that map.
        graemep 9mo ago
        I agree its having the mental map that matters but my intention was to disagree with the parent comment's claim that Fahrenheit is more appropriate to the "human scale of things". its a small advantage, but I think zero indicating when things might freeze is a more useful than "0 degrees lines up with really darned cold"
        SideburnsOfDoom 9mo ago
        To me, below zero Centigrade lines up with "really darned cold". It's all subjective. > zero indicating when things might freeze is useful Of course it is, parent is being silly. Picking some other non-zero random number for freezing just seems absurd to me. But that's because Centigrade is what I am familiar with. Say pick freezing = 12, or 47?. If those numbers for freezing seem absurd to you, then consider that the only advantage that "32" has for you is that you're familiar with it. People will find reasons to defend whichever one they grew up with.
        sarchertech 9mo ago
        The argument is that a scale that generally falls between 0-100 is inherently slightly more convenient than that that generally falls between -17 and 37. Obviously both can be adapted to. But if you took a group of aliens and asked them to come up with a temperature scale that was only used to convey how cold or warm the temperature felt to humans, they would almost certainly use human body temperature in their design process not the freezing and boiling points of water. This isn’t to say that Celsius isn’t perfectly fine and superior in most ways. I’m not insulting anyone or attempting to participate in some kind of culture war. Celsius is obviously a better scale for determining when water freezes. But I’ve never found myself paying attention to that. Mostly because any problems that I’d worry about related to the water freezing happen well below freezing. But if you find yourself unable to agree that one system has some inherent advantages over another, even if they don’t outweigh the disadvantages, you should step back and think a little more objectively.
    - Symbiote 9mo ago
      This is just your familiarity. Someone from the tropics might say 8°F is really darned cold, or 15°F, or whatever.
- sarchertech 9mo ago
  On the Fahrenheit scale, the majority of daily temperatures in the vast majority of the US fall between 0 and 100, which is -17 and 37 Celsius, and it’s more granular without introducing a decimal point.
  - ivan_gammel 9mo ago
    In metric world nobody cares about decimal points in temperature outside. Measuring precision is not that good because of wind, humidity, exposure to sun etc. We just don’t need that granularity, so it is really hard to understand why would you need that. Is there really any difference between 56°F and 57°F that you can feel and want to measure? And choice of 0/100 for weather is absolutely baseless. You do have below-zero days and in some places it can be over 100. With Celsius you know when it’s going to be ice on the roads and when rain becomes snow.
    - spogbiper 9mo ago
      below zero days are really really crazy cold and above 100 days are really really crazy hot. I don't think the fact that things occasionally exceed the 100 point "normal" range makes it less useful, if anything the out of bounds numbers emphasize the severity of the temperature. it's common where I grew up in the midwest US to hear "wow its going to be BELOW ZERO" as a way to express extreme cold
      - ivan_gammel 9mo ago
        For me personally “really really cold” starts below -30°C and crazy hot is above +30°C. It’s very subjective and outside of US many areas have climate where Fahrenheit doesn’t make sense at all.
        spogbiper 9mo ago
        maybe that's why its popular in the US? for most of this country the 0-100 range works quite well to describe the normal range of outdoor temperature. we seem to like 0-100 ranges, for instance speed in MPH works out nicely.. "over 100 MPH!" is a common expression for extreme speed drivers. school grades are often a value out of 100, etc. which makes you wonder why we don't prefer metric lol
- bryanlarsen 9mo ago
  Not as laughable as "metric is more convenient for human scale things". "Human scale things" includes fractions of an inch and fractions of a mile, which are horrible in customary units, and includes both the foot and yard which are used confusingly interchangeably. Metric is far superior for human scale measurements. And that's only length. It gets worse outside of length. Like WTF is an ounce?
  - roryirvine 9mo ago
    And using different ounces for metals, fluids, drugs, and, er, everything else - how does that not send people screaming into the arms of the metric system?! And then there's the hundredweight, where "hundred" actually means "eight"...
- its_ethan 9mo ago
  0 degrees F is a cold winter day, 100 degrees F is a hot summer day 0 degrees C is a cold winter day, 100 degrees C means you're dead I think he's suggesting that a 0-100 scale for temperature/"relative warmth outside" is more intuitive than a 0-37 scale. It's easier to to place 73 degrees on a 0-100 relative warmth scale than it is to place 18 degrees on a 0-37 scale (unless of course you grew up calibrated to the 0-37 scale and know that 18degrees means you maybe need a light jacket or whatever). I think it's funny that one of the main benefits of metric is its base-10-ness where things scale so nicely from 1-10-100-1000 etc. but then for temperature we're supposed to be fine with a 0-37? Fahrenheit is basically the 1-100 version of temperature (when it comes to weather).
- stronglikedan 9mo ago
  Celsius isn't granular enough for describing how humans feel temperature.
  - roryirvine 9mo ago
    Why are you restricting yourself to whole numbers? Do you refuse to measure lengths shorter than a barleycorn?
MarkusWandel 9mo ago
Oddly enough as a person born in a metric country, now living in Canada which is metric, and always educated in metric, I agree with you on the feet and inches. "A couple of inches" doesn't imply nearly the precision that "5 centimeters" (using the US spelling on purpose) implies. Similarly my own height of 5'10 is much more "human scale" than the 178cm that it says on my passport. Not for engineering though!!! Being able to add 1/64 and 5/16 and 17/32 etc. in your head without stumbling is a skill that I did not acquire. Don't agree on the Fahrenheit though and for the same reason! Degrees are just the right scale, and besides, anchored at freezing (0) and typical boiling (100) points. But that's just habits. Probably if I'd grown up with Fahrenheit, I'd prefer it too. And besides the oven defaulted to Fahrenheit and we never changed it. 350F...
- bluebarbet 9mo ago
  And I would come the opposite conclusion to you. On Fahrenheit, the Americans are surely right. For describing the weather, a system where the usual range is 30-100 is clearly more useful than one where it's 0-37, because you can say "high 70s" instead of the weirdly specific "about 27", and "low 40s" instead of the awkward "around 5 to 7". I say this as a European who has never used Fahrenheit.
  - 9rx 9mo ago
    Around here, temperatures range from -40ºC to +40ºC. The most important information temperature offers is whether it is going to snow or rain. 0ºC being roughly the temperature where that transition happens makes thinking about it seem more natural than picking a random number out of the 30-100 scale (well, -40-+104).
jventura 9mo ago
As someone born and living in a country that uses the metric system, I do not understand a bit of what inches and feets mean. Tell me something has 10-15 cm, and I know what it means. I measure 173cm, I know what one meter is about. 5'10? What the hell is that?! 5 feet and 10 inches? Some people have small feet, some have larger. And what is an "inch"? :) Oh, and fahrenheit, what the hell it means? 0ºC means ice, 100ºC means boiling water, 40º feels summer around here.. I guess I'm saying that you understand the values of the imperial system because you're used to them, as I'm used to values in the metric system..
- sarchertech 9mo ago
  That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that a system where the majority of air temperatures in the vast majority of the country fall between 0 and 100 is slightly more convenient than one in which they fall between -17 and 37. 0 is really cold it doesn’t frequently get colder than that in most of the country. 100 is really hot, in most places it doesn’t get hotter than that. Feet are slightly more convent for declining human sized things because meters are just a little too big to describe human height and centimeters are a bit you If you were designing a system to describe humans with no other consideration you’d probably pick one where 10 units was the average human height. And feet is closer to that than meters. Also you can divide 12 by 6 and 3. I’m not saying that customary is superior just that it does has certain advantages.
  - mcntsh 9mo ago
    You're just saying this because you're American and accustomed to it. To you, a 0-100 scale makes sense but to me it doesn't because 0f (-17c) is way rarer of a temp than 100f (38c). Anyway, from the metric perspective, most people look at it like... 0 is coat and boots weather, + 10 degrees is jacket weather, + 10 degrees is t-shirt weather, and + 10 degrees is hot. IMO, using "freezing" as the reference kinda makes sense...
    - amelius 9mo ago
      1 foot is the distance light travels in one nanosecond. And 1/10 of an inch is a very common distance in electronics (PCBs)
SideburnsOfDoom 9mo ago
> Inches and feet are a bit more convenient for measuring human scale things nope, this is mere familiarity. You find it more natural because you're more used to it, nothing more. There is nothing convenient about a system where "below zero" and "below freezing" are not synonyms. Or at least that's how I find it. because of what I'm used to. But at least I realise that might be a fact about me, not a fact about the world.
- sarchertech 9mo ago
  I replied to you above for temperature but for human scale measurement, if you were to design a system for human scale measurement from scratch, you’d likely make 10 units equal to the average height (you could also argue for making 1 unit equal to that). Feet are closer to that ideal than meters. That’s all that I meant. Also 12 inches is divisible by 3 and 6. And if you get into fractions of an inch, you always stick with powers of 2 which makes some math easier. Some math so much easier in metric. The more important factor is obviously familiarity. Both systems clearly work. But neither is inherently superior in all applications.

plaguna 9mo ago

"Fahrenheit is a bit more convenient for describing the weather" - you might need to show us an example here that is not biased. Because to me, Celsius is a bit more convenient for describing the weather.

bluGill 9mo ago
It is what you are used to for both of you. you could make your own measurement system and it would work fine once you get used to it - until you need to communicate with someone else who isn't used to it.
- ghaff 9mo ago
  A big part of it is certainly what you're used to. The other part, which I'm sympathetic to, is that for human scale everyday things, Fahrenheit 0 degrees lines up with really darned cold, 100 degrees with really hot outside of an oven, and the degree size is about twice as granular as Celsius. And while Celsius degree size is indeed widely used in engineering calculations, you're often using Kelvin as the absolute temperature scale. (Which does use Celsius degree increments of course.)
  - bryanlarsen 9mo ago
    > and the degree size is about twice as granular as Celsius. And then they'll argue that the inch is more convenient than the centimeter because it's twice as large. That's backwards. Fractions of an inch are in far more common usage than fractions of a centigrade. Ideal might be both a smaller inch and a smaller centigrade, but between the two a smaller inch is more helpful than a smaller centigrade.
  - graemep 9mo ago
    0 lines up with freezing point is very intuitive.
    - bluGill 9mo ago
      Perhaps, but useless for most purposes. You need to know how think of a coat to wear and you need a mental map from some number to some coat. It doesn't matter what the scale is, just that you have that map.
      - graemep 9mo ago
        I agree its having the mental map that matters but my intention was to disagree with the parent comment's claim that Fahrenheit is more appropriate to the "human scale of things". its a small advantage, but I think zero indicating when things might freeze is a more useful than "0 degrees lines up with really darned cold"
        SideburnsOfDoom 9mo ago
        To me, below zero Centigrade lines up with "really darned cold". It's all subjective. > zero indicating when things might freeze is useful Of course it is, parent is being silly. Picking some other non-zero random number for freezing just seems absurd to me. But that's because Centigrade is what I am familiar with. Say pick freezing = 12, or 47?. If those numbers for freezing seem absurd to you, then consider that the only advantage that "32" has for you is that you're familiar with it. People will find reasons to defend whichever one they grew up with.
        sarchertech 9mo ago
        The argument is that a scale that generally falls between 0-100 is inherently slightly more convenient than that that generally falls between -17 and 37. Obviously both can be adapted to. But if you took a group of aliens and asked them to come up with a temperature scale that was only used to convey how cold or warm the temperature felt to humans, they would almost certainly use human body temperature in their design process not the freezing and boiling points of water. This isn’t to say that Celsius isn’t perfectly fine and superior in most ways. I’m not insulting anyone or attempting to participate in some kind of culture war. Celsius is obviously a better scale for determining when water freezes. But I’ve never found myself paying attention to that. Mostly because any problems that I’d worry about related to the water freezing happen well below freezing. But if you find yourself unable to agree that one system has some inherent advantages over another, even if they don’t outweigh the disadvantages, you should step back and think a little more objectively.
  - Symbiote 9mo ago
    This is just your familiarity. Someone from the tropics might say 8°F is really darned cold, or 15°F, or whatever.
sarchertech 9mo ago
On the Fahrenheit scale, the majority of daily temperatures in the vast majority of the US fall between 0 and 100, which is -17 and 37 Celsius, and it’s more granular without introducing a decimal point.
- ivan_gammel 9mo ago
  In metric world nobody cares about decimal points in temperature outside. Measuring precision is not that good because of wind, humidity, exposure to sun etc. We just don’t need that granularity, so it is really hard to understand why would you need that. Is there really any difference between 56°F and 57°F that you can feel and want to measure? And choice of 0/100 for weather is absolutely baseless. You do have below-zero days and in some places it can be over 100. With Celsius you know when it’s going to be ice on the roads and when rain becomes snow.
  - spogbiper 9mo ago
    below zero days are really really crazy cold and above 100 days are really really crazy hot. I don't think the fact that things occasionally exceed the 100 point "normal" range makes it less useful, if anything the out of bounds numbers emphasize the severity of the temperature. it's common where I grew up in the midwest US to hear "wow its going to be BELOW ZERO" as a way to express extreme cold
    - ivan_gammel 9mo ago
      For me personally “really really cold” starts below -30°C and crazy hot is above +30°C. It’s very subjective and outside of US many areas have climate where Fahrenheit doesn’t make sense at all.
      - spogbiper 9mo ago
        maybe that's why its popular in the US? for most of this country the 0-100 range works quite well to describe the normal range of outdoor temperature. we seem to like 0-100 ranges, for instance speed in MPH works out nicely.. "over 100 MPH!" is a common expression for extreme speed drivers. school grades are often a value out of 100, etc. which makes you wonder why we don't prefer metric lol
bryanlarsen 9mo ago
Not as laughable as "metric is more convenient for human scale things". "Human scale things" includes fractions of an inch and fractions of a mile, which are horrible in customary units, and includes both the foot and yard which are used confusingly interchangeably. Metric is far superior for human scale measurements. And that's only length. It gets worse outside of length. Like WTF is an ounce?
- roryirvine 9mo ago
  And using different ounces for metals, fluids, drugs, and, er, everything else - how does that not send people screaming into the arms of the metric system?! And then there's the hundredweight, where "hundred" actually means "eight"...
its_ethan 9mo ago
0 degrees F is a cold winter day, 100 degrees F is a hot summer day 0 degrees C is a cold winter day, 100 degrees C means you're dead I think he's suggesting that a 0-100 scale for temperature/"relative warmth outside" is more intuitive than a 0-37 scale. It's easier to to place 73 degrees on a 0-100 relative warmth scale than it is to place 18 degrees on a 0-37 scale (unless of course you grew up calibrated to the 0-37 scale and know that 18degrees means you maybe need a light jacket or whatever). I think it's funny that one of the main benefits of metric is its base-10-ness where things scale so nicely from 1-10-100-1000 etc. but then for temperature we're supposed to be fine with a 0-37? Fahrenheit is basically the 1-100 version of temperature (when it comes to weather).
stronglikedan 9mo ago
Celsius isn't granular enough for describing how humans feel temperature.
- roryirvine 9mo ago
  Why are you restricting yourself to whole numbers? Do you refuse to measure lengths shorter than a barleycorn?

MarkusWandel 9mo ago

Oddly enough as a person born in a metric country, now living in Canada which is metric, and always educated in metric, I agree with you on the feet and inches. "A couple of inches" doesn't imply nearly the precision that "5 centimeters" (using the US spelling on purpose) implies. Similarly my own height of 5'10 is much more "human scale" than the 178cm that it says on my passport. Not for engineering though!!! Being able to add 1/64 and 5/16 and 17/32 etc. in your head without stumbling is a skill that I did not acquire. Don't agree on the Fahrenheit though and for the same reason! Degrees are just the right scale, and besides, anchored at freezing (0) and typical boiling (100) points. But that's just habits. Probably if I'd grown up with Fahrenheit, I'd prefer it too. And besides the oven defaulted to Fahrenheit and we never changed it. 350F...

bluebarbet 9mo ago
And I would come the opposite conclusion to you. On Fahrenheit, the Americans are surely right. For describing the weather, a system where the usual range is 30-100 is clearly more useful than one where it's 0-37, because you can say "high 70s" instead of the weirdly specific "about 27", and "low 40s" instead of the awkward "around 5 to 7". I say this as a European who has never used Fahrenheit.
- 9rx 9mo ago
  Around here, temperatures range from -40ºC to +40ºC. The most important information temperature offers is whether it is going to snow or rain. 0ºC being roughly the temperature where that transition happens makes thinking about it seem more natural than picking a random number out of the 30-100 scale (well, -40-+104).

jventura 9mo ago

As someone born and living in a country that uses the metric system, I do not understand a bit of what inches and feets mean. Tell me something has 10-15 cm, and I know what it means. I measure 173cm, I know what one meter is about. 5'10? What the hell is that?! 5 feet and 10 inches? Some people have small feet, some have larger. And what is an "inch"? :) Oh, and fahrenheit, what the hell it means? 0ºC means ice, 100ºC means boiling water, 40º feels summer around here.. I guess I'm saying that you understand the values of the imperial system because you're used to them, as I'm used to values in the metric system..

sarchertech 9mo ago
That’s not what I’m saying at all. I’m saying that a system where the majority of air temperatures in the vast majority of the country fall between 0 and 100 is slightly more convenient than one in which they fall between -17 and 37. 0 is really cold it doesn’t frequently get colder than that in most of the country. 100 is really hot, in most places it doesn’t get hotter than that. Feet are slightly more convent for declining human sized things because meters are just a little too big to describe human height and centimeters are a bit you If you were designing a system to describe humans with no other consideration you’d probably pick one where 10 units was the average human height. And feet is closer to that than meters. Also you can divide 12 by 6 and 3. I’m not saying that customary is superior just that it does has certain advantages.
- mcntsh 9mo ago
  You're just saying this because you're American and accustomed to it. To you, a 0-100 scale makes sense but to me it doesn't because 0f (-17c) is way rarer of a temp than 100f (38c). Anyway, from the metric perspective, most people look at it like... 0 is coat and boots weather, + 10 degrees is jacket weather, + 10 degrees is t-shirt weather, and + 10 degrees is hot. IMO, using "freezing" as the reference kinda makes sense...
  - amelius 9mo ago
    1 foot is the distance light travels in one nanosecond. And 1/10 of an inch is a very common distance in electronics (PCBs)

SideburnsOfDoom 9mo ago

> Inches and feet are a bit more convenient for measuring human scale things nope, this is mere familiarity. You find it more natural because you're more used to it, nothing more. There is nothing convenient about a system where "below zero" and "below freezing" are not synonyms. Or at least that's how I find it. because of what I'm used to. But at least I realise that might be a fact about me, not a fact about the world.

sarchertech 9mo ago
I replied to you above for temperature but for human scale measurement, if you were to design a system for human scale measurement from scratch, you’d likely make 10 units equal to the average height (you could also argue for making 1 unit equal to that). Feet are closer to that ideal than meters. That’s all that I meant. Also 12 inches is divisible by 3 and 6. And if you get into fractions of an inch, you always stick with powers of 2 which makes some math easier. Some math so much easier in metric. The more important factor is obviously familiarity. Both systems clearly work. But neither is inherently superior in all applications.