5 ms·

This annoys the hell out of me. Metric is worse in almost every way for day to day tasks. Not everyone is a scientist doing complex calculations. For science,

by axod 17y ago

This annoys the hell out of me. Metric is worse in almost every way for day to day tasks. Not everyone is a scientist doing complex calculations. For science, maths, engineering, sure use metric. Imperial measurements are based on convenience. Why do we buy a dozen rolls from the baker and not 10? So we can divide them between 2,3,4,6 people. Weights are similarly based on what is useful. Look at a recipe for cakes and you might see 1Lb of this, 1/2Lb of this. The metric equivalent? 100g of this, 200g of that. How is that more useful to me? You can easily divide imperial weights by 2,4,8,16 to make smaller batches. Doing the same with metric is a pain. Why do we ask for some 2 by 4 timber? Because it's easier than asking for some 48mm by 96mm timber. If you're doing finer work, measuring things in divisions of an inch makes perfect sense. 16ths of an inch means you can subdivide with ease. Try dividing a cm into 8 equal parts sometime and tell me how you get on. Why do we use shoe size numbers rather than specify the length of our feet in mm? Because shoe sizes are about the right precision. In the UK, we also use stone to measure our weight. I'm 9 stone and a bit. Why is it more useful to be able to say I'm, 60kg. That's more precision than I want to tell someone my weight. I know this is an unpopular view with geeks, but if someone could please explain what problem metric solves, I'm all ears (And please don't trot out the space shuttle imperial vs metric mix up FUD).

eru 17y ago
> Why do we ask for some 2 by 4 timber? Because it's easier than asking for some 48mm by 96mm timber. Only, you wouldn't. For the same reason you do not buy 2.11337642 pints [0] of milk. The metric system is convenient enough to work in daily life. (But the historical baggage it contains annoys me. For example the we should get rid of the Kelvin and use a unit of temperature that makes the Boltzmann constant have a numerical value of 1. Also the Mol should make way for a sensible unit of number of atoms, like 1. Oh, and the speed of light should be made some simple number, too.) I guess with the advent of computers the difficulties of calculation with imperial units should not matter any longer. So imperial units are just not inconvenient enough to warrant a change. Like SI units are not inconvenient enough to warrant a change to something even simpler. On the subject of choosing dimensions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_number http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_number has some interesting things to say. [0] 1 Liter = 2.11337642 Pints
- axod 17y ago
  You missed my point though... People use 2x4 timber because it's a useful size of timber to use. And they use inches because they're useful in describing that. mm/cm/m are less useful for that use case.
  - ugh 17y ago
    Holy, holy 2 by 4. Nobody touch the 2 by 4. We build our houses with stones. Not stupid trees ;-)
  - seanx 17y ago
    100mm * 50mm is what I buy. Or 10cm * 5cm. It's not that complicated.
    - axod 17y ago
      I didn't say it was complicated anywhere. I said it was less useful and unnecessary.
  - chrisbolt 17y ago
    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumber#Dimensional_lumber http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumber#Dimensional_lumber A 2x4 isn't even 2"x4"
ugh 17y ago
From the perspective of someone living in some magical country were metric is used all the time your argument sounds very strange. I do get that it is costly to convert. I cannot, until today, grasp any imperial unit intuitively. Every time I encounter one of those strange things I have to convert (painful even with Google) or else I wouldn't get it. Imperial units are just gibberish to me. I guess this would be the same if it were the other way round. I don't get your point about convenience. Sure, there might be some minor things that work a bit better in imperial (or not, I don't think your examples are that convincing), but compared to the cost of learning two systems (you have to, for school and science - that must be a pain, I'm happy I never had to do this) this is minor stuff. Also: I don't really know, but I would think that science class would be much harder if you are unable to intuitively grasp the units. I would guess that you are locked into your system. Leaving it would be costly, even if having only one system for everything would clearly be an advantage.
- axod 17y ago
  I used both at school, mainly metric. Since then though I use metric for science and imperial for day to day things... "Pint, Mile, Inch, Stone, Pound" etc
thirdusername 17y ago
I found most of your points absurd and you were up voted up so I thought it warranted a hopefully proper response. My country (Sweden) has used the metric system by law since 1888 so there's nobody left that remembers the good old days, it's something even the oldest of our grandparents were taught in school. Metric is worse in almost every way for day to day tasks. Not everyone is a scientist doing complex calculations. For science, maths, engineering, sure use metric. Considering that every day people in my country and every other country that uses the metric system (almost the whole world mind you) is as normal and ordinary as every other place on earth I really don't see the point of what you are arguing. Even the most incompetent people I meet seem to be perfecly able to do extremely trivial calculations like they are second nature. Imperial measurements are based on convenience. Why do we buy a dozen rolls from the baker and not 10? So we can divide them between 2,3,4,6 people. We still say dozen and buy eggs in the dozen (or two dozen). The system for measurment you use do not force you to stop buying in convenient amounts. The only time I notice problems with dividing edibles is when there's children around or someone is trying to figure out how to slice a cake into an odd number of pieces. Weights are similarly based on what is useful. Look at a recipe for cakes and you might see 1Lb of this, 1/2Lb of this. The metric equivalent? 100g of this, 200g of that. How is that more useful to me? It's not more or less useful, it's exactly the same level of usefulness. Why do we ask for some 2 by 4 timber? Because it's easier than asking for some 48mm by 96mm timber. I would write your question exactly the same way but with 5 by 10cm instead of 2 by 4 though I honestly have no idea whatsoever what unit you are using to make the decimal equivalent. nevermind I figured it out it's probably " which means inches except it gives me slighter larger numbers when I put in "2 inches in cm" into Google it's 5,08cm. You would also probably ask for a slightly larger piece of timber for the same reason as you wouldn't ask for 1.9 by 3.9 of timber. Then again I'm not an arts and crafts type of guy, maybe there's a convention here I'm missing that's used even in countries that have the metric system. If you're doing finer work, measuring things in divisions of an inch makes perfect sense. 16ths of an inch means you can subdivide with ease. Try dividing a cm into 8 equal parts sometime and tell me how you get on Do you somehow manage to get cut things with infinite precisions? You do realize you can use decimal points in the metric system, calculators and that it's no different than the scenario where you split an inch into 7 which I'm sure isn't a problem for you, right? Also since an inch seem to be defined to be exactly 2.54 cm 1/8th of that would be exactly 0,3175cm the scenario you paint up first doesn't become impossible to do with a finite number of decimal points and your argument about splitting a cm has no bearing on that. In the UK, we also use stone to measure our weight. I'm 9 stone and a bit. Why is it more useful to be able to say I'm, 60kg. That's more precision than I want to tell someone my weight. Don't people assume you are rounding when you give them whole numbers over there when you give them nice well formed number like 60? If you tell ordinary people you weigh 60kg I'm fairly certain everyone would assume you weight roughly 60kg or you could always say "roughly 60kg", I really don't see the difference. If it's a convention everyone uses you would presumably think telling someone you weigh 60,3kg is more precision than you want to tell someone. I know this is an unpopular view with geeks, but if someone could please explain what problem metric solves, I'm all ears (And please don't trot out the space shuttle imperial vs metric mix up FUD). The point of standardization is that it costs society is less when it doesn't have to convert or adapt all the time and I don't mean your country in particular, I mean for the whole of earth. It would also remove a fair bit of confusion not only from trying to understand what a yard, furlong or pint is but worse things like there being more than one mile unit. If you can convert almost the entire earth into using an Imperial system I'll be happy to jump on that instead, it sure would be simpler if everyone used the same system. That FUD as you called it is called confusion and I don't see why you should ignore a perfectly valid point when we are just a few countries short of eliminating those types of mistakes forever.

by axod 17y ago

eru 17y ago

> Why do we ask for some 2 by 4 timber? Because it's easier than asking for some 48mm by 96mm timber. Only, you wouldn't. For the same reason you do not buy 2.11337642 pints [0] of milk. The metric system is convenient enough to work in daily life. (But the historical baggage it contains annoys me. For example the we should get rid of the Kelvin and use a unit of temperature that makes the Boltzmann constant have a numerical value of 1. Also the Mol should make way for a sensible unit of number of atoms, like 1. Oh, and the speed of light should be made some simple number, too.) I guess with the advent of computers the difficulties of calculation with imperial units should not matter any longer. So imperial units are just not inconvenient enough to warrant a change. Like SI units are not inconvenient enough to warrant a change to something even simpler. On the subject of choosing dimensions http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_number http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Preferred_number has some interesting things to say. [0] 1 Liter = 2.11337642 Pints

axod 17y ago
You missed my point though... People use 2x4 timber because it's a useful size of timber to use. And they use inches because they're useful in describing that. mm/cm/m are less useful for that use case.
- ugh 17y ago
  Holy, holy 2 by 4. Nobody touch the 2 by 4. We build our houses with stones. Not stupid trees ;-)
- seanx 17y ago
  100mm * 50mm is what I buy. Or 10cm * 5cm. It's not that complicated.
  - axod 17y ago
    I didn't say it was complicated anywhere. I said it was less useful and unnecessary.
- chrisbolt 17y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumber#Dimensional_lumber http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumber#Dimensional_lumber A 2x4 isn't even 2"x4"

ugh 17y ago

From the perspective of someone living in some magical country were metric is used all the time your argument sounds very strange. I do get that it is costly to convert. I cannot, until today, grasp any imperial unit intuitively. Every time I encounter one of those strange things I have to convert (painful even with Google) or else I wouldn't get it. Imperial units are just gibberish to me. I guess this would be the same if it were the other way round. I don't get your point about convenience. Sure, there might be some minor things that work a bit better in imperial (or not, I don't think your examples are that convincing), but compared to the cost of learning two systems (you have to, for school and science - that must be a pain, I'm happy I never had to do this) this is minor stuff. Also: I don't really know, but I would think that science class would be much harder if you are unable to intuitively grasp the units. I would guess that you are locked into your system. Leaving it would be costly, even if having only one system for everything would clearly be an advantage.

axod 17y ago
I used both at school, mainly metric. Since then though I use metric for science and imperial for day to day things... "Pint, Mile, Inch, Stone, Pound" etc

thirdusername 17y ago

I found most of your points absurd and you were up voted up so I thought it warranted a hopefully proper response. My country (Sweden) has used the metric system by law since 1888 so there's nobody left that remembers the good old days, it's something even the oldest of our grandparents were taught in school. Metric is worse in almost every way for day to day tasks. Not everyone is a scientist doing complex calculations. For science, maths, engineering, sure use metric. Considering that every day people in my country and every other country that uses the metric system (almost the whole world mind you) is as normal and ordinary as every other place on earth I really don't see the point of what you are arguing. Even the most incompetent people I meet seem to be perfecly able to do extremely trivial calculations like they are second nature. Imperial measurements are based on convenience. Why do we buy a dozen rolls from the baker and not 10? So we can divide them between 2,3,4,6 people. We still say dozen and buy eggs in the dozen (or two dozen). The system for measurment you use do not force you to stop buying in convenient amounts. The only time I notice problems with dividing edibles is when there's children around or someone is trying to figure out how to slice a cake into an odd number of pieces. Weights are similarly based on what is useful. Look at a recipe for cakes and you might see 1Lb of this, 1/2Lb of this. The metric equivalent? 100g of this, 200g of that. How is that more useful to me? It's not more or less useful, it's exactly the same level of usefulness. Why do we ask for some 2 by 4 timber? Because it's easier than asking for some 48mm by 96mm timber. I would write your question exactly the same way but with 5 by 10cm instead of 2 by 4 though I honestly have no idea whatsoever what unit you are using to make the decimal equivalent. nevermind I figured it out it's probably " which means inches except it gives me slighter larger numbers when I put in "2 inches in cm" into Google it's 5,08cm. You would also probably ask for a slightly larger piece of timber for the same reason as you wouldn't ask for 1.9 by 3.9 of timber. Then again I'm not an arts and crafts type of guy, maybe there's a convention here I'm missing that's used even in countries that have the metric system. If you're doing finer work, measuring things in divisions of an inch makes perfect sense. 16ths of an inch means you can subdivide with ease. Try dividing a cm into 8 equal parts sometime and tell me how you get on Do you somehow manage to get cut things with infinite precisions? You do realize you can use decimal points in the metric system, calculators and that it's no different than the scenario where you split an inch into 7 which I'm sure isn't a problem for you, right? Also since an inch seem to be defined to be exactly 2.54 cm 1/8th of that would be exactly 0,3175cm the scenario you paint up first doesn't become impossible to do with a finite number of decimal points and your argument about splitting a cm has no bearing on that. In the UK, we also use stone to measure our weight. I'm 9 stone and a bit. Why is it more useful to be able to say I'm, 60kg. That's more precision than I want to tell someone my weight. Don't people assume you are rounding when you give them whole numbers over there when you give them nice well formed number like 60? If you tell ordinary people you weigh 60kg I'm fairly certain everyone would assume you weight roughly 60kg or you could always say "roughly 60kg", I really don't see the difference. If it's a convention everyone uses you would presumably think telling someone you weigh 60,3kg is more precision than you want to tell someone. I know this is an unpopular view with geeks, but if someone could please explain what problem metric solves, I'm all ears (And please don't trot out the space shuttle imperial vs metric mix up FUD). The point of standardization is that it costs society is less when it doesn't have to convert or adapt all the time and I don't mean your country in particular, I mean for the whole of earth. It would also remove a fair bit of confusion not only from trying to understand what a yard, furlong or pint is but worse things like there being more than one mile unit. If you can convert almost the entire earth into using an Imperial system I'll be happy to jump on that instead, it sure would be simpler if everyone used the same system. That FUD as you called it is called confusion and I don't see why you should ignore a perfectly valid point when we are just a few countries short of eliminating those types of mistakes forever.