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The biggest liability of the metric system to me is its system of unit prefixes: this is just a bizarre reimplementation of scientific notation that expresses t

by Gormo 12y ago

The biggest liability of the metric system to me is its system of unit prefixes: this is just a bizarre reimplementation of scientific notation that expresses the most significant quantitative information not as part of the actual quantitative component of its notation, but as an arcane verbal prefix attached to the name of the thing being counted. What on earth is the advantage of a notation that makes it easy to scale a value by an order of magnitude without having to alter its numeric representation? This seems to be a much more significant "WTF" of the metric system than the fact that its base units don't seem to have any meaningful anchor in any substantive context.

ygra 12y ago
You get several related units of measurement that each have sane conversion factors. If something goes well beyond centimeters, meters and later kilometers are much nicer to handle. Inches to feet to yards to miles doesn't scale nearly as nicely because of conversion factors of 12, 3 and (I think) 1760 involved there. And since this property is shared by every unit you have the same conversion factors everywhere. No need to memorise hundreds of units, just a dozen and a pattern. Also when combining units (e.g. N being kg⋅m/s²) the conversion factors stay sane.
- Gormo 12y ago
  It seems like you have only a single base unit of measurement; the rigid powers-of-ten scaling factors prevent any other useful base units from being applied, e.g. there's nothing that approximates a foot in the metric system. So it seems a bit disingenuous to treat a centimeter as a distinct unit when it's really just 1 x 10^-2 meters. The whole "conversion factors" thing seems like a superfluous gimmick. Why would you start working with one unit, then spontaneously decide to start using a different unit in the same context? But in the unusual circumstance where you would need to switch units, perhaps due to a shift in the scale you're operating at, the metric system still prevents you from using a unit appropriate to the context, and limits you to only scaling a less appropriate unit up or down by a power of ten. It really is just scientific notation re-implemented in a bizarre and arcane way. With customary units, you can still represent quantities with scientific notation, and use inches, feet, miles, etc. as your base unit as the context demands, but you've still got a variety of base units to choose from, each more optimal than the others when operating its appropriate context.

by Gormo 12y ago

ygra 12y ago

You get several related units of measurement that each have sane conversion factors. If something goes well beyond centimeters, meters and later kilometers are much nicer to handle. Inches to feet to yards to miles doesn't scale nearly as nicely because of conversion factors of 12, 3 and (I think) 1760 involved there. And since this property is shared by every unit you have the same conversion factors everywhere. No need to memorise hundreds of units, just a dozen and a pattern. Also when combining units (e.g. N being kg⋅m/s²) the conversion factors stay sane.

Gormo 12y ago
It seems like you have only a single base unit of measurement; the rigid powers-of-ten scaling factors prevent any other useful base units from being applied, e.g. there's nothing that approximates a foot in the metric system. So it seems a bit disingenuous to treat a centimeter as a distinct unit when it's really just 1 x 10^-2 meters. The whole "conversion factors" thing seems like a superfluous gimmick. Why would you start working with one unit, then spontaneously decide to start using a different unit in the same context? But in the unusual circumstance where you would need to switch units, perhaps due to a shift in the scale you're operating at, the metric system still prevents you from using a unit appropriate to the context, and limits you to only scaling a less appropriate unit up or down by a power of ten. It really is just scientific notation re-implemented in a bizarre and arcane way. With customary units, you can still represent quantities with scientific notation, and use inches, feet, miles, etc. as your base unit as the context demands, but you've still got a variety of base units to choose from, each more optimal than the others when operating its appropriate context.