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Why Won’t America Go Metric?

31 points by AnonJ 12y ago

theVirginian 12y ago
I like the american system. It's based on 12 which is easily divisible by 2,4,3,(and 6 obviously) making it practical and easy to use for handy jobs. Having fractions of an inch divisible by factors of 2 is also far more convenient than using a decimal system imho. Why not just use a system that lists both units?
- rdtsc 12y ago
  > It's based on 12 which is easily divisible by 2,4,3,(and 6 obviously) making it practical and easy to use for handy jobs. Interestingly I never thought about it that way. I grew up and lived in Europe, and even after many years of living here, when I need more precision I always revert to millimeters instead of fractions of an inch.
- D_Alex 12y ago
  >I like the american system. It's based on 12 ... Are you sure?? I thought it is based on 2 (pints in a quart), 3 (feet in a yard), 4, 12, 16 etc and there is no rhyme or reason for which is which...
  - lkbm 12y ago
    There definitely is some major messiness with the system, but: 4 fluid drams in a Tablespoon (No 0.5Tbps unit?) 2 Tablespoons in a fluid ounce 4 fluid ounces in a gill (No 0.5 gill unit?) 2 gills in a cup 2 cups in a pint 2 pints in a quart 2 quarts in a half gallon 2 half gallons in a gallon 63 gallons in a hogshead Okay, yeah, there's a lot of messy units outside of this series, and some holes. We have the apothecaries' system, the avoirdupois system, the customary system. A hundredweight is 112 LBs because a Stone is 14 rather than 10. A mile is some number of feet I always have to look up.
- rimantas 12y ago
  What the system it has to do with handy jobs? Nobody prevents anyone from having parts which are 12 or 60 cm wide and as easily divisible.
colindean 12y ago
One reason: Who is going to pay for it?
- Aloha 12y ago
  I think this is the most undervalued comment on this thread, and is the real answer - plus the normal human resistance to change.
w1ntermute 12y ago
The real question is "why should America go metric?" When you're such a large country, you can afford to do things your own way - others will accommodate you.
- knieveltech 12y ago
  That line of reasoning is rapidly reaching it's expiration date.
- CaptainZapp 12y ago
  When you're such a large country, you can afford to do things your own way Detroit had this attitude for a long time. Which made it virtually impossible to sell their gas guzzling tanks into Asia or Europe.
- PhasmaFelis 12y ago
  "Because I can get away with it" is often a reason to do something (or not do something, in this case), but it's rarely a good reason.
btilly 12y ago
(Devil's advocate time...) I wish that the French had gone all of the way to a duodecimal system, and a base 12 measurement system. Most of the arguments for the Imperial system surround the fact that in convenient places you can divide things in half or thirds. And a base 12 time system could have been compelling enough to replace the Babylonian base 60 system that we are stuck with. The one that, even in the metric system makes it hard to convert from meters/second to km/hour.
- lstamour 12y ago
  And while we're at it, let's add Kodak's 13-month calendar to the (evenly-divided) wishlist too, eh? :D
  - jacobolus 12y ago
    If we switch to a base 12 system, I’d recommend instead a 360 day + 5 or 6 extra day year, using either 6 or 12 day weeks, grouped into 10 36-day or 15 24-day months. Or maybe Kodak’s 4 x 7 x 13 + {1 or 2} system would be fine, since we don’t too often need to do complicated artithmetic computations in terms of numbers of days.
- carsongross 12y ago
  A base 60 system is very practical: 3 * 4 * 5 = 60 so you can divide into halves, thirds, quarters, fifths, sixths, tenths, etc all very simply. And of course, 3 * 4 * 5 * 6 gives you 360, and even more useful even divisions. Our ancestors were not idiots.
  - btilly 12y ago
    Ever tried memorizing the 60 times table? The duodecimal times table is actually easier to memorize than the decimal one because while it is 44% bigger, there are many easy patterns.
- jacobolus 12y ago
  If we routinely used a base-12 number system, and converted all our units to be base-12, it would have an individually small but collectively massive positive impact on our mathematical fluency. Calculating with fractions vs. “duodecimals” would be a much less dramatic trade-off, and for many everyday calculations converting back and forth between duodecimal and fractional forms would be trivial. We could easily change our systems for time, angular measurement, etc. to the new system in a much more closely backwards-compatible way, and without sacrificing the advantages of the base-60 system. For everyday calculations using physical quantities and measurements, the new system would beat the metric system hands down. While we’re at it, we should probably replace the written numeral graphs with ones that are easy to write a bit more quickly and as difficult to confuse (either for one another, or for alphabet graphs) as we can manage, and change the pronunciation such that all of the basic numerals are one syllable, and regularize and simplify pronunciations of multi-digit numerals. The Chinese have a big leg up on English/Spanish/French/... speakers when it comes to basic arithmetic simply by virtue of their number pronunciation which is regular and fast.
lstamour 12y ago
Mountains out of molehills. The truth of it is, it doesn't matter what the default unit of measurement is as long as you know to clearly specify the unit! :) Like language translation, let others convert your "native" units into their local version. This is no different than how foods or tastes change, or sometimes even color preferences, can change regionally. At least we've moved beyond "m" means both "metre" and "mile". Generally people now say "mi" when they mean "mile", so I'll take that as a win. I tried to convert the word "mile" to other languages, but ended up finding that in many translations, they converted US miles into native miles or kilometres, and so did not have a clearly defined word for such things. Which is why I emphasize being specific about the unit of measure. The rest doesn't really matter. 70°F? 21°C? Feels about the same to me! That said, I wish everyone would hurry up on the YYYY-MM-DD adoption. Always confuses me to see 2-digit days and months and not know which is which.
disillusioned 12y ago
I live in Phoenix, a city built entirely on a mile-demarked grid. It's useful to be able to approximate how far everything is in whole units based on the grid, and I reckon it would take a very long time before people just referred to them as "blocks" or something similar.
jandrewrogers 12y ago
Due to my background as both an American and (chemical) engineer, I am fluent in metric, American, and domain specific unit systems used in chemical engineering that are neither American nor metric. I can switch between these as necessary quite fluidly; it is an elementary skill as a chemical engineer. I would argue that being limited to a single unit system is like being limited to a single language. In principle, no one needs more than one but in practice the differences in expressiveness for different purposes are interesting and useful. These differences in expressiveness are connected to the continued existence of different systems. America is big enough and is sufficiently independent of trade in its economy (most of its stupendous production is also internally consumed) that the cost of not transitioning to metric is marginal. I understand why metric is a good system but simultaneously understand why the benefit of metric is dubious for the average American. Remember, American units are defined in terms of metric units; it is a preference, an American can precisely convert to metric at any time if they deem it useful. But they don't because it serves little purpose. Basically, like their language, Americans occupy a big enough economic sphere that they get to define their standards. An enormous number of global standards are American in origin as it is. I don't sweat the lack of metric even though I use it routinely. Once you become familiar with enough unit and arithmetic systems, you quickly learn that they all suck in some context. It is pointless to turn these things into religions.
- D_Alex 12y ago
  >I would argue that being limited to a single unit system is like being limited to a single language. In principle, no one needs more than one but in practice the differences in expressiveness for different purposes are interesting and useful. After considerable reflection, I have come to the view that in fact the differences are not interesing and not useful. What is useful though is consistency and ease of application (which the metric system has) and familiarity (which just depends on the circumstances). I work in the oil and gas industry, and I had to learn to think in terms of bizarre units like stcf/bbl, or pounds per gallon. In the end, the only driver was that once you digest enough information, you can compare things on a like-for-like basis... if you know the horsepower ratings of 10 car models, it is more immediately useful to be given the horsepower of the car you consider buying rather than its power output in kW. But in the end I see no downsides, only upsides, if the entire industry switched to the metric system. stcf/bbl (standard cubic feet per barrel) by the way is a customary measure of the amount of gas dissolved in the oil. After 25 years in the industry, I know for example that 1000 stcf/bbl represents a gassy oil that will take some effort to stabilise, and 100 stcf/bbl is a relatively dead crude... so inormation about new crudes is useful to me in this form. But - what a weird unit it is! The information could much better be provided as a dimensionless ratio, eg gas-to-oil ratio of 200 for gassy oil would be intuitive and better suited to use in further calculations, and once you've seen enough data expressed in this way, the familiarity issue is taken care of. I invite you to provide counterexamples, where the customary unit has an inherent advantage (familiarity does not count). I can't think of any.
robbrown451 12y ago
Going metric isn't economical in the US as it has been elsewhere. You can't expect all the individual businesses to do something that isn't in their interest, and in general, when you've got this big a country with a single measuring system, it's not going to be in an individual business's interest to retool. This was not the case in most other places, where there was a lot more pressure to standardize because you might have a few different measuring systems within a few hundred mile radius.
jeffdavis 12y ago
I rarely see anyone consider that the American system has at least one fundamental advantage: it's closer to a binary system, rather than decimal. Why do we want a decimal system? The only reason for a base of 10 that I can see is that we have ten fingers. But binary systems map better to a lot of real-world problems. If baking, are you more likely to take a recipe and halve it or cut it by a factor of ten? In construction, are you more likely to subdivide an area into two, or ten? If you split a stock, are you more likely to split two-to-one or ten-to-one? The answer, in all those cases, is the former, which is favored by a binary system. Forcing decimal upon us is what leaves us with numbers like 0.125 rather than 1/8. So rather than move to metric, let's come up with a more consistent base-two system, and then we can all use that. (Just saying that to make a point; not a serious proposal.)
- rdtsc 12y ago
  > it's closer to a binary system, rather than decimal. Not sure I follow. We got : 1 yard = 3 feet = 36 inches how is that closer to binary, than say: 1m = 10dm = 100cm = 1000mm
  - spc476 12y ago
    It's close, but not quite. 2 cups to 1 pint. 2 pints to one quart. 2 quarts to 1 gallon. But then there are the odd ones, like 3 feet to 1 yard, 3 teaspoons to 1 tablespoon (2 tablespoons is 1 dessertspoon though). But there is quite a bit of doubling in the Imperial system.
- bnj 12y ago
  I don't understand. It's just as easy to divide by half in a decimal system as in a binary system; both share 2 as a factor. My mathematician friends tell me that for a lot of reasons base twelve (like our clock) would be preferable, but changing makes no sense because the benefits don't come close to the costs... In any event, like and system of measurement, decimal is ultimately founded on some arbitrary decisions. The argument in favor of decimal is that a common system of measurement has incredible advantages; nothing you mentioned in favor of the imperial system stands up to the benefits to being in lockstep with the rest of civilization.
jacobsimon 12y ago
I learned both systems in school--our rulers always had inches and centimeters--but we never really learned the metric system until much later in science classes. I think there's a strong argument to be made that the metric system is easier to learn and could be taught at the same time as counting and basic arithmetic. It would make learning science and math easier in higher grades and waste less class time. I'm honestly surprised there are so many comments here defending the Imperial system.
Mikhail_Edoshin 12y ago
Metric is overrated. It's both too recent an invention and a part of the long gone movement that thought everything is to be rebuilt, you know, "rationally." It didn't turn out more rational as a result, at least not the kind of rationality that we really need. [Edit] Disclaimer: I am from a country that went metric a century ago.
dmichulke 12y ago
While I appreciate the history lesson in the article I strongly disagree with > Is global uniformity a good thing? Not when it comes to cultural issues, and customary measures are certainly a part of our national culture. because you can define everything as a part of culture. I don't even want to go into examples (think "ugly things countries did and do"). So, yes, ideally there is no need for anyone to adopt anything, but it's not because it's part of culture.
toolslive 12y ago
Can't you just split the question in 2 parts ? - Is the metric system superior to the American (bastard) imperial system ? - Is it worth the switch ? There are a lot of other accidental situations out there that are (perceived to be) too costly to eradicate. For example, in Europe (not the UK) we drive on the right hand side while yielding the right of way to the right as well. For safety reasons, it would have been better to switch on of the two to the left. Will it happen? probably not. Actually, cost might even be irrelevant: The Chinese still use chop-sticks while a fork is clearly more practical.
- jmoiron 12y ago
  Chopsticks are superior for lots of traditional chinese dishes.
- dirktheman 12y ago
  Sweden switched from left side driving to right side driving as late as in 1967. So it is possible, but, like you said, not likely. Sweden isn't an island, so I can imagine the safety hazards when crossing a border. The UK/Ireland are islands of course, so there's more of a physical barrier. I guess this applies to the metric/imperial system, too. I think we can all agree that the metric system is more logical. But there just isn't enough incentive to make the switch.
  - adventured 12y ago
    Countries are always funny about making such huge switches though. For example Sweden still has Swedish as its official language, which makes absolutely no rational sense. They should obviously standardize on English. There's no good reason for a country of ten million people to have their own language, it's extraordinarily inefficient. The counter argument to this is always: but 90% of Swedish people also speak English. Ok, so what's the point of maintaining Swedish then? It's like arguing it'd be ok for the US to keep / use / teach both metric and imperial - in reality there is no good reason for that, it would be backwards.
- jacobolus 12y ago
  In my experience, chopsticks are better when you have food that has already been cut up into pieces, especially when you’re trying to pluck pieces of food out of soups (I can’t imagine eating hot pot with a fork). By contrast, forks are better when you want to hold down a big piece of meat to cut it with a knife, or when you need to use the side of the fork itself to cut something, or when you’re trying to pick up awkward slippery things that you can just stab instead (e.g. raw cherry tomatoes). For some types of food and dining arrangements, ditching the silverware/individual plates and using a piece of flat bread or a handful of rice to pick up the food (as people do in South Asia, many parts of Africa, and parts of Latin America) is more effective. Still other types of food is best eaten with hands alone (e.g. sushi, sandwiches, pizza [whatever Europeans might tell you]). To call the fork “clearly more practical” betrays ignorance and lack of imagination about the broader world.
Derbasti 12y ago
I think that the article is sorely missing the point of the metric system. It's not about communication. For communication, the frathe of reference doesn't matter, as long as both parties agree on the same reference. In fact, I find imperial units to be somewhat more intuitive than metric units. Instead, it's all about unit conversion. One liter of water weighs one kilogram and is a one decimeter cubmore room degrees is where water freezes, and 100 degrees is where it boils. This makes water the universal conversion constant, which makes it easy to compare different units (eg weights and volumes). Also, it's trivial to convert meters to millimeters and kilometers. But this happens surprisingly seldom in practice compared to converting volumes to weights or lenghts.
- aragot 12y ago
  > more intuitive than metric units I've seen that several times in the thread, but it's like asking what is the most intuitive size of "a piece" of string: Depends where you're born and which unit system you've used. > and 100 degrees where it boils I once thought that 0 and 100 degrees C were defined as the temperature of water freezing and boiling, and 1Pa would be defined accordingly, but nope. Boiling can happen at 98.5 degrees under ncpt.
beloch 12y ago
Metrologically, even the pound is defined in terms of metric kilograms. Yes, I speak of the least worthy metric unit that is still defined in terms of an ingot sitting somewhere in France instead of a phenomena of nature. As such, the U.S. has gone entirely metric, and has been metric for over a century. It's just that some people insist on using second-rate translations of metric that are based on units inherited from the good ol' colonial days when the British ruled all. As a Canadian, I am forced to use some imperial units to this day because of my close proximity to the U.S.. This is in spite of the fact that the empire that created imperial units has now gone totally metric. Way to go U.S.A.. You crazy living anachronistic monarchists. I bet you even think sticking to Imperial units is patriotic somehow too! Freakin' hilarious.
- drstewart 12y ago
  >You crazy living anachronistic monarchists. Kinda hard to take seriously from the people that have a reigning monarch as a legacy from that same empire.
- PhantomGremlin 12y ago
  > the empire that created imperial units has now gone totally metric Huh? Not according to either of these two links. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_speed_limits_in_the_United_Kingdom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_speed_limits_in_the_United... http://www.ukma.org.uk/speed-limits http://www.ukma.org.uk/speed-limits Edit: BTW in the USA when I grew up we called them "imperial units", but nowadays the schools are calling them "customary units". Just to add to the confusion. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units
santacluster 12y ago
Amongst all the rationalizations I miss the one thing that is typical for the US as a young immigrant nation with little history: a desperate need to cling to any kind of custom or tradition to create a sense of identity. Especially if those customs set them apart from the rest of the world. This goes well beyond the metric system. In many ways the US is extremely old-fashioned in the eyes of other Westerners, clinging to customs most of us have abandoned many decades ago. Unless there is a clear economic advantage in it, the US is strongly resistant to change for fear of diluting its still relatively young and shallow identity. On typical form of American deflection is coming up with elaborate explanations why what works for other countries won't work for America. Sometimes these exceptionalist arguments are not entirely untrue (the US is an exceptional nation in many ways), but they become really transparent when they try to argue why other countries are different. (Most of those arguments just show a willful cultural ignorance, especially remarkable when coming from well-educated and well-traveled Americans.) No, for the US there is no compelling economic reason to go metric. But that's not the reason why it doesn't, that's just the rationalization du jour. Any other country would not be afraid to adopt the simple convenience of joining the rest of world in a single standard.
- adventured 12y ago
  Clinging to customs is definitely a common human trait. I don't see anything special about the US doing it. For example Europe clings to one of the most absurd customs of all: large numbers of unnecessary languages. Instead of standardizing, countries in Europe go out of their way to preserve extreme inefficiency in communication. So there's Europe, not a young world, desperately clinging to languages to hold on to tradition and supposedly culture. If it's important to standardize measurement, it must be dramatically more important to standardize on language. Why does Europe have three dozen major languages in use? Half of Europe shares no common language, with only 50% of people there speaking English. The only thing that would make sense, is to standardize on English, Spanish or perhaps Mandarin (it doesn't make as much sense as the other two for Europe). I see non-stop talk about how the US should adopt the metric system, and I completely agree because it makes logical sense. And Europe should abandon all of their languages and adopt English - let's see which happens first.
ozh 12y ago
I stumbled upon a very interesting short documentary about the metric system and the world's roundest object. Well worth 10 minutes of your break today. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMByI4s-D-Y http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMByI4s-D-Y
rzimmerman 12y ago
This article claims Americans initially rejected the metric system because it was "too French", which is an inaccurate exaggeration. Before the metric system was created, the US, which had recently won independence, was put in the position of selecting a standard system of weights and measures. Jefferson suggested a decimal system based off the seconds pendulum at 45° latitude. He did this in coordination with scientists in France with the direct goal of achieving a universal standard. Before congress could adopt this system, the French modified their standard: Although French scientists working on a decimal system had originally supported using the seconds pendulum as a scientific basis, and Jefferson had deliberately matched his seconds pendulum proposal to the French one, based on a measurement at the latitude of Paris, the French decided to use the length of a meridian of the Earth instead of a seconds pendulum. This and other developments changed what had promised to be an internationally developed system into a strictly French project. Jefferson wrote, "The element of measure adopted by the National Assembly excludes, ipso facto, every nation on earth from a communion of measurement with them." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_for_Establishing_Uniformity_in_the_Coinage,_Weights,_and_Measures_of_the_United_States#Subsequent_developments http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_for_Establishing_Uniformit... As a result the US wound up passing on Jefferson's system and eventually settling on US "customary" units. The real benefit of adopting the metric system is to have a consistent, widespread system of units. The United States has had this for over 200 years and most sectors of the economy have been isolated enough from Europe and the rest of the world where adopting metric has not been worth it. Industries that are increasingly global (automotive, electronics, etc) have already effectively adopted metric.
jrjarrett 12y ago
For me, it's not about the length or the scale of the temperature, it's having grown up with the "feel" or the "time" of a measurement. If I see a road sign that says it's 130 miles to Chicago, then I know how much time it's going to take me to get there. I don't have that "feel" for seeing 209km. If I see it's 60° (F) out, I know how that feels, I know how to dress for it. I have a very different expectation if I see it's 15° (C). I personally think that's the biggest barrier to conversion, the learned, in-grained expectation of time or sensation when seeing a measurement expressed.

31 points by AnonJ 12y ago

I like the american system. It's based on 12 which is easily divisible by 2,4,3,(and 6 obviously) making it practical and easy to use for handy jobs. Having fractions of an inch divisible by factors of 2 is also far more convenient than using a decimal system imho. Why not just use a system that lists both units?

rdtsc 12y ago
> It's based on 12 which is easily divisible by 2,4,3,(and 6 obviously) making it practical and easy to use for handy jobs. Interestingly I never thought about it that way. I grew up and lived in Europe, and even after many years of living here, when I need more precision I always revert to millimeters instead of fractions of an inch.
D_Alex 12y ago
>I like the american system. It's based on 12 ... Are you sure?? I thought it is based on 2 (pints in a quart), 3 (feet in a yard), 4, 12, 16 etc and there is no rhyme or reason for which is which...
- lkbm 12y ago
  There definitely is some major messiness with the system, but: 4 fluid drams in a Tablespoon (No 0.5Tbps unit?) 2 Tablespoons in a fluid ounce 4 fluid ounces in a gill (No 0.5 gill unit?) 2 gills in a cup 2 cups in a pint 2 pints in a quart 2 quarts in a half gallon 2 half gallons in a gallon 63 gallons in a hogshead Okay, yeah, there's a lot of messy units outside of this series, and some holes. We have the apothecaries' system, the avoirdupois system, the customary system. A hundredweight is 112 LBs because a Stone is 14 rather than 10. A mile is some number of feet I always have to look up.
rimantas 12y ago
What the system it has to do with handy jobs? Nobody prevents anyone from having parts which are 12 or 60 cm wide and as easily divisible.

colindean 12y ago

One reason: Who is going to pay for it?

Aloha 12y ago
I think this is the most undervalued comment on this thread, and is the real answer - plus the normal human resistance to change.

w1ntermute 12y ago

The real question is "why should America go metric?" When you're such a large country, you can afford to do things your own way - others will accommodate you.

knieveltech 12y ago
That line of reasoning is rapidly reaching it's expiration date.
CaptainZapp 12y ago
When you're such a large country, you can afford to do things your own way Detroit had this attitude for a long time. Which made it virtually impossible to sell their gas guzzling tanks into Asia or Europe.
PhasmaFelis 12y ago
"Because I can get away with it" is often a reason to do something (or not do something, in this case), but it's rarely a good reason.

btilly 12y ago

(Devil's advocate time...) I wish that the French had gone all of the way to a duodecimal system, and a base 12 measurement system. Most of the arguments for the Imperial system surround the fact that in convenient places you can divide things in half or thirds. And a base 12 time system could have been compelling enough to replace the Babylonian base 60 system that we are stuck with. The one that, even in the metric system makes it hard to convert from meters/second to km/hour.

lstamour 12y ago
And while we're at it, let's add Kodak's 13-month calendar to the (evenly-divided) wishlist too, eh? :D
- jacobolus 12y ago
  If we switch to a base 12 system, I’d recommend instead a 360 day + 5 or 6 extra day year, using either 6 or 12 day weeks, grouped into 10 36-day or 15 24-day months. Or maybe Kodak’s 4 x 7 x 13 + {1 or 2} system would be fine, since we don’t too often need to do complicated artithmetic computations in terms of numbers of days.
carsongross 12y ago
A base 60 system is very practical: 3 * 4 * 5 = 60 so you can divide into halves, thirds, quarters, fifths, sixths, tenths, etc all very simply. And of course, 3 * 4 * 5 * 6 gives you 360, and even more useful even divisions. Our ancestors were not idiots.
- btilly 12y ago
  Ever tried memorizing the 60 times table? The duodecimal times table is actually easier to memorize than the decimal one because while it is 44% bigger, there are many easy patterns.
jacobolus 12y ago
If we routinely used a base-12 number system, and converted all our units to be base-12, it would have an individually small but collectively massive positive impact on our mathematical fluency. Calculating with fractions vs. “duodecimals” would be a much less dramatic trade-off, and for many everyday calculations converting back and forth between duodecimal and fractional forms would be trivial. We could easily change our systems for time, angular measurement, etc. to the new system in a much more closely backwards-compatible way, and without sacrificing the advantages of the base-60 system. For everyday calculations using physical quantities and measurements, the new system would beat the metric system hands down. While we’re at it, we should probably replace the written numeral graphs with ones that are easy to write a bit more quickly and as difficult to confuse (either for one another, or for alphabet graphs) as we can manage, and change the pronunciation such that all of the basic numerals are one syllable, and regularize and simplify pronunciations of multi-digit numerals. The Chinese have a big leg up on English/Spanish/French/... speakers when it comes to basic arithmetic simply by virtue of their number pronunciation which is regular and fast.

lstamour 12y ago

Mountains out of molehills. The truth of it is, it doesn't matter what the default unit of measurement is as long as you know to clearly specify the unit! :) Like language translation, let others convert your "native" units into their local version. This is no different than how foods or tastes change, or sometimes even color preferences, can change regionally. At least we've moved beyond "m" means both "metre" and "mile". Generally people now say "mi" when they mean "mile", so I'll take that as a win. I tried to convert the word "mile" to other languages, but ended up finding that in many translations, they converted US miles into native miles or kilometres, and so did not have a clearly defined word for such things. Which is why I emphasize being specific about the unit of measure. The rest doesn't really matter. 70°F? 21°C? Feels about the same to me! That said, I wish everyone would hurry up on the YYYY-MM-DD adoption. Always confuses me to see 2-digit days and months and not know which is which.

disillusioned 12y ago

I live in Phoenix, a city built entirely on a mile-demarked grid. It's useful to be able to approximate how far everything is in whole units based on the grid, and I reckon it would take a very long time before people just referred to them as "blocks" or something similar.

jandrewrogers 12y ago

Due to my background as both an American and (chemical) engineer, I am fluent in metric, American, and domain specific unit systems used in chemical engineering that are neither American nor metric. I can switch between these as necessary quite fluidly; it is an elementary skill as a chemical engineer. I would argue that being limited to a single unit system is like being limited to a single language. In principle, no one needs more than one but in practice the differences in expressiveness for different purposes are interesting and useful. These differences in expressiveness are connected to the continued existence of different systems. America is big enough and is sufficiently independent of trade in its economy (most of its stupendous production is also internally consumed) that the cost of not transitioning to metric is marginal. I understand why metric is a good system but simultaneously understand why the benefit of metric is dubious for the average American. Remember, American units are defined in terms of metric units; it is a preference, an American can precisely convert to metric at any time if they deem it useful. But they don't because it serves little purpose. Basically, like their language, Americans occupy a big enough economic sphere that they get to define their standards. An enormous number of global standards are American in origin as it is. I don't sweat the lack of metric even though I use it routinely. Once you become familiar with enough unit and arithmetic systems, you quickly learn that they all suck in some context. It is pointless to turn these things into religions.

D_Alex 12y ago
>I would argue that being limited to a single unit system is like being limited to a single language. In principle, no one needs more than one but in practice the differences in expressiveness for different purposes are interesting and useful. After considerable reflection, I have come to the view that in fact the differences are not interesing and not useful. What is useful though is consistency and ease of application (which the metric system has) and familiarity (which just depends on the circumstances). I work in the oil and gas industry, and I had to learn to think in terms of bizarre units like stcf/bbl, or pounds per gallon. In the end, the only driver was that once you digest enough information, you can compare things on a like-for-like basis... if you know the horsepower ratings of 10 car models, it is more immediately useful to be given the horsepower of the car you consider buying rather than its power output in kW. But in the end I see no downsides, only upsides, if the entire industry switched to the metric system. stcf/bbl (standard cubic feet per barrel) by the way is a customary measure of the amount of gas dissolved in the oil. After 25 years in the industry, I know for example that 1000 stcf/bbl represents a gassy oil that will take some effort to stabilise, and 100 stcf/bbl is a relatively dead crude... so inormation about new crudes is useful to me in this form. But - what a weird unit it is! The information could much better be provided as a dimensionless ratio, eg gas-to-oil ratio of 200 for gassy oil would be intuitive and better suited to use in further calculations, and once you've seen enough data expressed in this way, the familiarity issue is taken care of. I invite you to provide counterexamples, where the customary unit has an inherent advantage (familiarity does not count). I can't think of any.

robbrown451 12y ago

Going metric isn't economical in the US as it has been elsewhere. You can't expect all the individual businesses to do something that isn't in their interest, and in general, when you've got this big a country with a single measuring system, it's not going to be in an individual business's interest to retool. This was not the case in most other places, where there was a lot more pressure to standardize because you might have a few different measuring systems within a few hundred mile radius.

jeffdavis 12y ago

I rarely see anyone consider that the American system has at least one fundamental advantage: it's closer to a binary system, rather than decimal. Why do we want a decimal system? The only reason for a base of 10 that I can see is that we have ten fingers. But binary systems map better to a lot of real-world problems. If baking, are you more likely to take a recipe and halve it or cut it by a factor of ten? In construction, are you more likely to subdivide an area into two, or ten? If you split a stock, are you more likely to split two-to-one or ten-to-one? The answer, in all those cases, is the former, which is favored by a binary system. Forcing decimal upon us is what leaves us with numbers like 0.125 rather than 1/8. So rather than move to metric, let's come up with a more consistent base-two system, and then we can all use that. (Just saying that to make a point; not a serious proposal.)

rdtsc 12y ago
> it's closer to a binary system, rather than decimal. Not sure I follow. We got : 1 yard = 3 feet = 36 inches how is that closer to binary, than say: 1m = 10dm = 100cm = 1000mm
- spc476 12y ago
  It's close, but not quite. 2 cups to 1 pint. 2 pints to one quart. 2 quarts to 1 gallon. But then there are the odd ones, like 3 feet to 1 yard, 3 teaspoons to 1 tablespoon (2 tablespoons is 1 dessertspoon though). But there is quite a bit of doubling in the Imperial system.
bnj 12y ago
I don't understand. It's just as easy to divide by half in a decimal system as in a binary system; both share 2 as a factor. My mathematician friends tell me that for a lot of reasons base twelve (like our clock) would be preferable, but changing makes no sense because the benefits don't come close to the costs... In any event, like and system of measurement, decimal is ultimately founded on some arbitrary decisions. The argument in favor of decimal is that a common system of measurement has incredible advantages; nothing you mentioned in favor of the imperial system stands up to the benefits to being in lockstep with the rest of civilization.

jacobsimon 12y ago

I learned both systems in school--our rulers always had inches and centimeters--but we never really learned the metric system until much later in science classes. I think there's a strong argument to be made that the metric system is easier to learn and could be taught at the same time as counting and basic arithmetic. It would make learning science and math easier in higher grades and waste less class time. I'm honestly surprised there are so many comments here defending the Imperial system.

Mikhail_Edoshin 12y ago

Metric is overrated. It's both too recent an invention and a part of the long gone movement that thought everything is to be rebuilt, you know, "rationally." It didn't turn out more rational as a result, at least not the kind of rationality that we really need. [Edit] Disclaimer: I am from a country that went metric a century ago.

dmichulke 12y ago

While I appreciate the history lesson in the article I strongly disagree with > Is global uniformity a good thing? Not when it comes to cultural issues, and customary measures are certainly a part of our national culture. because you can define everything as a part of culture. I don't even want to go into examples (think "ugly things countries did and do"). So, yes, ideally there is no need for anyone to adopt anything, but it's not because it's part of culture.

toolslive 12y ago

Can't you just split the question in 2 parts ? - Is the metric system superior to the American (bastard) imperial system ? - Is it worth the switch ? There are a lot of other accidental situations out there that are (perceived to be) too costly to eradicate. For example, in Europe (not the UK) we drive on the right hand side while yielding the right of way to the right as well. For safety reasons, it would have been better to switch on of the two to the left. Will it happen? probably not. Actually, cost might even be irrelevant: The Chinese still use chop-sticks while a fork is clearly more practical.

jmoiron 12y ago
Chopsticks are superior for lots of traditional chinese dishes.
dirktheman 12y ago
Sweden switched from left side driving to right side driving as late as in 1967. So it is possible, but, like you said, not likely. Sweden isn't an island, so I can imagine the safety hazards when crossing a border. The UK/Ireland are islands of course, so there's more of a physical barrier. I guess this applies to the metric/imperial system, too. I think we can all agree that the metric system is more logical. But there just isn't enough incentive to make the switch.
- adventured 12y ago
  Countries are always funny about making such huge switches though. For example Sweden still has Swedish as its official language, which makes absolutely no rational sense. They should obviously standardize on English. There's no good reason for a country of ten million people to have their own language, it's extraordinarily inefficient. The counter argument to this is always: but 90% of Swedish people also speak English. Ok, so what's the point of maintaining Swedish then? It's like arguing it'd be ok for the US to keep / use / teach both metric and imperial - in reality there is no good reason for that, it would be backwards.
jacobolus 12y ago
In my experience, chopsticks are better when you have food that has already been cut up into pieces, especially when you’re trying to pluck pieces of food out of soups (I can’t imagine eating hot pot with a fork). By contrast, forks are better when you want to hold down a big piece of meat to cut it with a knife, or when you need to use the side of the fork itself to cut something, or when you’re trying to pick up awkward slippery things that you can just stab instead (e.g. raw cherry tomatoes). For some types of food and dining arrangements, ditching the silverware/individual plates and using a piece of flat bread or a handful of rice to pick up the food (as people do in South Asia, many parts of Africa, and parts of Latin America) is more effective. Still other types of food is best eaten with hands alone (e.g. sushi, sandwiches, pizza [whatever Europeans might tell you]). To call the fork “clearly more practical” betrays ignorance and lack of imagination about the broader world.

Derbasti 12y ago

I think that the article is sorely missing the point of the metric system. It's not about communication. For communication, the frathe of reference doesn't matter, as long as both parties agree on the same reference. In fact, I find imperial units to be somewhat more intuitive than metric units. Instead, it's all about unit conversion. One liter of water weighs one kilogram and is a one decimeter cubmore room degrees is where water freezes, and 100 degrees is where it boils. This makes water the universal conversion constant, which makes it easy to compare different units (eg weights and volumes). Also, it's trivial to convert meters to millimeters and kilometers. But this happens surprisingly seldom in practice compared to converting volumes to weights or lenghts.

aragot 12y ago
> more intuitive than metric units I've seen that several times in the thread, but it's like asking what is the most intuitive size of "a piece" of string: Depends where you're born and which unit system you've used. > and 100 degrees where it boils I once thought that 0 and 100 degrees C were defined as the temperature of water freezing and boiling, and 1Pa would be defined accordingly, but nope. Boiling can happen at 98.5 degrees under ncpt.

beloch 12y ago

Metrologically, even the pound is defined in terms of metric kilograms. Yes, I speak of the least worthy metric unit that is still defined in terms of an ingot sitting somewhere in France instead of a phenomena of nature. As such, the U.S. has gone entirely metric, and has been metric for over a century. It's just that some people insist on using second-rate translations of metric that are based on units inherited from the good ol' colonial days when the British ruled all. As a Canadian, I am forced to use some imperial units to this day because of my close proximity to the U.S.. This is in spite of the fact that the empire that created imperial units has now gone totally metric. Way to go U.S.A.. You crazy living anachronistic monarchists. I bet you even think sticking to Imperial units is patriotic somehow too! Freakin' hilarious.

drstewart 12y ago
>You crazy living anachronistic monarchists. Kinda hard to take seriously from the people that have a reigning monarch as a legacy from that same empire.
PhantomGremlin 12y ago
> the empire that created imperial units has now gone totally metric Huh? Not according to either of these two links. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_speed_limits_in_the_United_Kingdom http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Road_speed_limits_in_the_United... http://www.ukma.org.uk/speed-limits http://www.ukma.org.uk/speed-limits Edit: BTW in the USA when I grew up we called them "imperial units", but nowadays the schools are calling them "customary units". Just to add to the confusion. :) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_customary_units

santacluster 12y ago

Amongst all the rationalizations I miss the one thing that is typical for the US as a young immigrant nation with little history: a desperate need to cling to any kind of custom or tradition to create a sense of identity. Especially if those customs set them apart from the rest of the world. This goes well beyond the metric system. In many ways the US is extremely old-fashioned in the eyes of other Westerners, clinging to customs most of us have abandoned many decades ago. Unless there is a clear economic advantage in it, the US is strongly resistant to change for fear of diluting its still relatively young and shallow identity. On typical form of American deflection is coming up with elaborate explanations why what works for other countries won't work for America. Sometimes these exceptionalist arguments are not entirely untrue (the US is an exceptional nation in many ways), but they become really transparent when they try to argue why other countries are different. (Most of those arguments just show a willful cultural ignorance, especially remarkable when coming from well-educated and well-traveled Americans.) No, for the US there is no compelling economic reason to go metric. But that's not the reason why it doesn't, that's just the rationalization du jour. Any other country would not be afraid to adopt the simple convenience of joining the rest of world in a single standard.

adventured 12y ago
Clinging to customs is definitely a common human trait. I don't see anything special about the US doing it. For example Europe clings to one of the most absurd customs of all: large numbers of unnecessary languages. Instead of standardizing, countries in Europe go out of their way to preserve extreme inefficiency in communication. So there's Europe, not a young world, desperately clinging to languages to hold on to tradition and supposedly culture. If it's important to standardize measurement, it must be dramatically more important to standardize on language. Why does Europe have three dozen major languages in use? Half of Europe shares no common language, with only 50% of people there speaking English. The only thing that would make sense, is to standardize on English, Spanish or perhaps Mandarin (it doesn't make as much sense as the other two for Europe). I see non-stop talk about how the US should adopt the metric system, and I completely agree because it makes logical sense. And Europe should abandon all of their languages and adopt English - let's see which happens first.

ozh 12y ago

I stumbled upon a very interesting short documentary about the metric system and the world's roundest object. Well worth 10 minutes of your break today. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMByI4s-D-Y http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZMByI4s-D-Y

rzimmerman 12y ago

This article claims Americans initially rejected the metric system because it was "too French", which is an inaccurate exaggeration. Before the metric system was created, the US, which had recently won independence, was put in the position of selecting a standard system of weights and measures. Jefferson suggested a decimal system based off the seconds pendulum at 45° latitude. He did this in coordination with scientists in France with the direct goal of achieving a universal standard. Before congress could adopt this system, the French modified their standard: Although French scientists working on a decimal system had originally supported using the seconds pendulum as a scientific basis, and Jefferson had deliberately matched his seconds pendulum proposal to the French one, based on a measurement at the latitude of Paris, the French decided to use the length of a meridian of the Earth instead of a seconds pendulum. This and other developments changed what had promised to be an internationally developed system into a strictly French project. Jefferson wrote, "The element of measure adopted by the National Assembly excludes, ipso facto, every nation on earth from a communion of measurement with them." http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_for_Establishing_Uniformity_in_the_Coinage,_Weights,_and_Measures_of_the_United_States#Subsequent_developments http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Plan_for_Establishing_Uniformit... As a result the US wound up passing on Jefferson's system and eventually settling on US "customary" units. The real benefit of adopting the metric system is to have a consistent, widespread system of units. The United States has had this for over 200 years and most sectors of the economy have been isolated enough from Europe and the rest of the world where adopting metric has not been worth it. Industries that are increasingly global (automotive, electronics, etc) have already effectively adopted metric.

jrjarrett 12y ago

For me, it's not about the length or the scale of the temperature, it's having grown up with the "feel" or the "time" of a measurement. If I see a road sign that says it's 130 miles to Chicago, then I know how much time it's going to take me to get there. I don't have that "feel" for seeing 209km. If I see it's 60° (F) out, I know how that feels, I know how to dress for it. I have a very different expectation if I see it's 15° (C). I personally think that's the biggest barrier to conversion, the learned, in-grained expectation of time or sensation when seeing a measurement expressed.