You must log in or register to comment.
A truly logic system would be entirely designed around a base-12 number system. But we were born with an imperfect set of 10 fingers and that doomed us.
Those aliens have 6 fingers. It’s an absolutely ironic twist that their discussion on measuring systems is super illogical for them, and yet logical is the verbiage they use.
I’ll also defend fractional measurements over decimal to my dying breath. Decimal measurements can’t express precision very well at all. You can only increase or decrease precision by a power of 10.
If your measurement is precise to a quarter of a unit, how do you express that in decimal? “.25” is implying that your measurement is precise to 1/100th - misrepresenting precision by a factor of 25.
Meanwhile with fractions it’s easy. 1/4. Oh, your measurement of 1/4 meter is actually super duper precise? Great! Just don’t reduce the fraction.
928/3712 is the same number as 1/4 or .25, but now you know exactly how precise the measurement is. Whereas with a decimal measurement you either have to say it’s precise to 1/1000th (0.250), which is massively understating the precision, or 1/10000th (0.2500), which is massively overstating it.
Fractional measurements are awesome.
No measured value will be perfectly precise, so it doesn’t make sense to use that as a criteria for a system of measurement. You’re never going to be able to cut a board to exactly 1/3 of a foot, so it doesn’t matter that the metric value will be rounded a bit.
Not “a bit”. You can have a 9x difference in precision and be unable to record it.
This feels like such a niche reason to prefer fractional measurements.
I’m scratching my head, wondering why all the downvotes.
I’ve always sucked at math tbh, but fractional measurements are my jam. It goes faster in my head and I can visualize things better.
i’ve never heard of anyone using non-reduced fractions to measure precision. if you go into a machine shop and ask for a part to be milled to 16/64”, they will ask you what precision you need, they would never assume that means 16/64”±1/128”.
if you need custom precision in any case, you can always specify that by hand, fractional or decimal.
But you can’t specify it with decimal. That’s my point. How do you tell the machine operator it needs to be precise to the 64th in decimal? “0.015625” implies precision over 15,000x as precise as 1/64th. The difference between 1/10 and 1/100 is massive, and decimal has no way of expressing it with significant figures.
sure you can, you say “i need a hole with diameter 0.25” ± 0.015625“”. it doesn’t matter that you have more sig figs when you state your precision
but regardless, that’s probably not the precision you care about. there’s a good chance that you actually want something totally different, like 0.25±0.1”. with decimal, it’s exceptionally clear what that means, even for complicated/very small decimals. doing the same thing fractionally has to be written as 1/4±1/10”, meaning you have to figure out what that range of values are (7/20” to 3/20”)
Having to provide a “+/-” for a measurement is a silly alternative to using a measurement that already includes precision. You’re just so used to doing things a stupid way that you don’t see it.
providing an arbitrarily non-reduced fraction is an even sillier alternative. the same fundamental issue arises either way, and it’s much clearer to use obvious semantics that everyone can understand
It’s not the same issue at all.
How do you represent 1/64th in decimal without implying greater or lesser precision? Or 1/3rd? Or 1/2 or literally anything that isn’t a power of 10?
You’re defending the practice of saying “this number, but maybe not because we can’t actually measure that precisely, so here’s some more numbers you can use to figure out how precise or measurements are”
How is that a more elegant solution than simply having the precision recorded in a single rational measurement?
This is one of the dumbest fucking trolls I’ve ever seen.
Congratulations? I guess?
Honestly, I don’t give a shit either way. Wish us 'mericans were on the same wavelength as the rest of the world, but we’re awful in so many ways it doesn’t even register.
However, this troll is gold and I think you’re all sleeping on his genius
You can count your 12 finger-parts with your thumb, once you go over 12 on one hand, go back to 1 and count one more on the other hand
Have fun counting on one hand, writing with the other, or counting to 100 dozenal on just two hands!
Base 6 however is perfect for 2 hands with 5 fingers each. You can easily represent the six possible digits 0 1 2 3 4 5 on each hand, and can therefore comfortably count to 55 (decimal 35) with two hands, using our familiar place-value numeral system.
I like the idea of base 12 counting the segments of your fingers with your thumb. Though its less intuitive.
Care to elaborate on how base 12 would be better than base 10 in this case?
I’ve heard before it’s because 1/3 can be represented as a whole number.
Just like feet, which can have 12 inches. But if we want to get more precise we start cutting inches into eighths for some reason 😅
I always use decimal inches wherever possible, personally. Makes so much more sense to me than “3/64” or some crap like that
A base 12 metric system is the best of all worlds. 1/3 of a cm is 0.4cm or 4.
Your way seems like the worst of all worlds. What is 0.1 feet in inches? shrugs. If you’re going to use a different system to the people around you, why not use normal metric?
I said decimal inches, not decimal feet. Also, I use them personally with my own projects, not when giving measurements to other people. 4.25 inches makes more sense to me than 4 1/4 inches. I could use cm but I’m more used to inches since I live in the US. If I were to give my measurements to someone else I’d use fractions, since that is the standard here.
old school carpenters’ squares also have inches divided in 12.
Basically it’s because 12 is more divisible than 10. Factors of 10 are 1,2,5 and 10. 12 has 1,2,3,4,6 and 12. This gives more flexibility when discussing numbers. Our time is technically using base 12, which is why we can say quarter past 4 and it means a traditional whole number. That’s the argument I’ve heard anyway
I believe this is also why we have 360 “degrees” in a circle, and not 365. The ancients hated that a year was clise to, but not exactly, 365 days. They chalked it up to the imperfection of Earth relative to the heavens. But a perfect year should be 360 days because it is divisible by every single digit number but 7.
deleted by creator
The ancients actually used a 360 day calendar and a bonus week of 5-6 days at the end before the new year started.
On the matter of days in a years, there’s also the idea of spliting the year into 13 months of 28 days each for a total of 364 days, closer matching the lunar cycle (and women’s body). Every day of the year would always be on the same day of the week.
Then the extra day? It’s world day, a global holiday for celebrating the new year, and it doesn’t belong in any weekday. Sometimes we’d need an extra leap year day (just like right now with 29th February) so they would just both be world day.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Fixed_Calendar
Check for pros and cons.
I’m very much in favor of the 13 month system. So hard to change such things now that we don’t have emperors.*
*I’m also very much in favor of not having emperors though…
Because 12 is more than 10 and more is better.
7.62mm is more than 5.56mm but 'muricans (fuck yeah) still chose AR-15s because freedum. Where is your God now? /s
I’m american and chose 7.62 three times in the forms of SKS, AK-47, and AK-104. Big bullet go boom.
Base 10 is the most easy to scale, you just move the coma and add 0s. Base 12 doesn’t allow that easily
A base 12 number system would have two extra symbols. Twelve would be written 10 and be called ten, and the number 144 would be written 100 and be called one hundred.
Everything you may think is inherent to base 10 is largely not. The quirky rules of 9’s multiplication table would apply to 11’s. Pi and e would still be irrational, and continue being no no matter which base of N you choose. Long division would work the same. Etc.
What if I choose base Pi? Then pi = 1
Checkmate.
Oh nvm, you did say base of N, but that’s boring.
I bet you love radians.
Can’t spell radians without rad 😎
You can just assign digits to ten and eleven?
Yep. In computer science you sometimes need to calculate with hexadecimal numbers where 10-15 are the letters A-F. You just use another factor for scaling “easily”.
In hexadecimal 10 is 16 in decimal. So if you do C * 10 it’s C0 but that is 192 in decimal (12 * 16, remember the base is 16).
Whats cool though is that (all hexadecimal):
10 / 2 = 8
10 is 2 to the power of 4 which means 10 is divisible by 2 4 times.
Similarly (and arguably even cooler) with a base 12 system 10 is divisible by 2 AND 3!
10 / 3 = 4
10 / 2 = 6
Ah yes, the weirdos who insist on using dozenal
I mean, base 12 or 16 is definitely better than 10. Not saying imperial is better but a system like metric that uses base 12 or 16 would be best, as it’s divisible by more numbers.
Ancient aliens confirmed. They’d never use base 10.
That is an unfortunate name for a numbers system
deleted by creator
Being able to easily work with fraction and integers is important for all things. Outside of mathematic? You mean outside of all things related to numbers? Ok…
What‘s 1/4 * 10^3?
What‘s 1/4 * 16^3?
4^5 (16^3 = 4^6 ) or 16^2 * 4
Thank you,
WolframWebster Alpha
I’ll bite.
4^-1 * (42)3 = 4^5 = 256 * 4 = 1024
deleted by creator
You do realize that this was an example to illustrate that it’s easier to just add to zeroes, right?
Oh my god get a new joke. The U.S. uses both systems just like everyone else.
You don’t use both, or at least, surely you mean “both” for cases where you are forced, like me by American online stores. And this joke won’t stop until you get rid of that shitty system.
Except we do use both. Sorry but you’re just wrong.
And sure, you’re entirely welcome to keep making the same joke over and over and pretending it’s still funny. Show that dead horse who’s boss.
I mean, not really.
Your maps, road signs, and speed are still in miles, height is still in feet and inches, weight is still in pounds, etc.
In Canada, we may use imperial for a few colloquial things, but everything for official use is in metric.
Ok, for one, that’s…still using both.
Two, I only wish we measured codeine in pints.
Three, and this is genuine interest/curiosity more than an internet gotcha — either you’re downplaying it because Canadians are really weird about making their whole identity The Country That Isn’t The US, or the Wikipedia entry on this is incorrect and should be fixed.
I’d always heard the roadsigns in Canada were primarily metric but could be in both, whatever, could be regional, willing to disbelieve hearsay. But I don’t think that cooking in tbsp, cups, and fahrenheit, or selling food by the pound and draft by the pint are really small colloquial concessions. Not to mention with the tool measurements, which we admittedly kinda force.
It’s to varying degrees, but all the same, we both use both. US milk is in gallons, but all soda shall be in liters. If we wanna get technical about which measurements are the ones professionally used, both countries go metric.
What I found the most amusing: the healthcare section notes that Canadian measurements in the medical field may be different from American ones despite both of those being in metric, presumably just to be contrary
This is essentially incorrect; the vast majority of people here use the inferior system in everyday usage.
But there are everyday examples where both are used.
E.g. If you see someone drinking a soda and ask them how much sugar is in it they’d probably tell you a number in grams.
Or if you have to take cough syrup the dosage is usually in milliliters.
Or if you ask someone what size engine their car has they’ll most likely tell you in liters.
And no one brings up that the UK actually uses both and in a lot more confusing way. Fuel in Liters but efficiency in miles per gallon. Speed in miles per hour but how far you drive in Kilometers. Weight of produce in grams and people in stone.
And even then British gallons are different from American gallons so the efficiency numbers look really frickin’ weird.
This isn’t very accurate. Imperial is used for car and travel related measurements, metric is used elsewhere (officially). It would be nice if we switched to metric but it is OK.
Fuel in Liters but efficiency in miles per gallon.
Yeah, I think this is basically the only confusing and annoying imperial/metric thing we have.
Speed in miles per hour but how far you drive in Kilometers.
We don’t use kilometers for how far we drive. We still use miles on signage and in everyday speech, along with miles per hour. I imagine if we switched to kilometers per hour, we would start using kilometers.
Weight of produce in grams and people in stone.
Older generations might still use stone but it is disappearing. Even my retired dad uses kg now. Younger generations are not taught stone (for decades now), as they grow up it will disappear.
It is a similar story to height in feet and inches. It is becoming less common, but probably slower than the switch away from stone.
Plus, many of us are in STEM fields and appreciate/prefer the metric/SI system. However, we think in imperial units because that’s what we used in daily life in our formative years.
I have no problem with metric units, but I do a rough mental conversion to imperial to relate to the measurement, and get a “feel” for it. This goes for temperature, distance, speed, volume, weight/mass, pressure, and essentially anything else that’s an everyday unit.
It’s analogous to how much of the world thinks of nuclear explosions in terms of kilotons or megatons of TNT. I mean, all you have to do is multiply megatons by 4.184e+15 and you’re back to the sensible unit of Joules. :)
I go back to what my professor in my first engineering class told us – a good engineer can work in any unit system.
At the end of the day, imperial vs metric is an argument you have over some beers with friends. It’s inconsequential.
That’s a damn good point, the distance doesn’t change regardless of what you call it.
Exactly. This isn’t rocket science, it’s simple math. And by knowing two unit systems, you can describe the distance in the most convenient way possible.
Hell, I’m not an engineer and that’s something I was taught in school. In Texas. In the 80’s.
Man, this place has devolved so horrendously…
Man :/
Oh really? So if I send blueprints to a steel fabricator in metric, they will not have a problem with that? Lol try again.
Um, they wouldn’t have a problem with that. That’s exactly what I used to do, fabricate steel parts for companies like Liebherr and Komatsu, who would send us blueprints in metric. My coworkers and I actually preferred it.
I’m talking about architectural steel. Not mechanical engineering, structural. I-beams.
They’ll only have a problem if you don’t label your units or say somewhere what they are. And if you don’t do that, that isn’t an imperial vs metric problem, that’s flat out bad engineering.
You clearly have never worked with structural steel fabricators.
deleted by creator
Very few countries use both systems.
True. The U.S. is one of them.
In reality, while most countries don’t use metric and imperial, they do use metric and some other local system of measurements. Many countries use both metric and their historically preferred system.
.
What non-metric system does Germany use? What non-metric system does France use? What non-metric system does Poland use?
deleted by creator
Have you like… Read the articles you posted? I think you might have to re-read what a non-metric unit if measurement would be. All the “units” listed as “still in use in Germany” are based on the metric system. Just because one calls 500g/0.5kg a pound doesn’t make the unit non-metric, it’s base is metric, same goes for all the other units there. The only non metric unit I see ever is inch because that’s what displays are marketed in for you lot and we get the same displays here as you.
This is completely incorrect. SI units exist and they’re pretty much based on metric units. It’s still a separate unit system.
Wait…
What?! The SI system IS a metric system and doesn’t really differ from the systems used in most countries in day to day life. Perhaps by using Kelvin instead of Celsius which is basically the same unit of measurement but with different starting points.
True but the ones that do are Western English speaking countries like the UK, Ireland (where I am and which is in the final throws of ditching Imperial), Canada and to a lesser extent the US, which uses metric where appropriate.
Those countries are going to be disproportionately represented on here.
I read an article many years ago on why the the US hadn’t gone metric and cost is a huge factor. Just replacing all the speed signs across such a huge land mass would be serious money for example with limited benefit.
Folks deal with the change itself just fine. I’ve lived though the change to metric and my parents lived through the change to decimal currency from shillings etc just fine also so ultimately the US still uses Imperial because it works just fine and the hassle of changing isn’t worth it.
Only going to cost more down the line, sunk cost fallacy, etc…
Not really, they can use them until they need to be replaced and then have the replacements have both.
You’d have to have them in different cookies like Texas does with those bullshit fucking day/night speed limits
No. Also ur fat and eat hambugers
Now it’s time for the school supplies joke
US has imperial for everything but guns and drugs, there are countries that use a lot of both (like UK) but there are many countries that use no imperial
US has imperial for everything but guns and drugs
If we’re talking legal drugs, my prescriptions all come in milligrams.
If we’re talking illegal drugs, though fractions of ounces or pounds were more common, it wasn’t unusual to come across someone selling stuff by the gram back in the day, and I can’t imagine that’s changed. The weed dude would sell any amount at $10/gram - and yes, I did see someone come with $3 once. 😂 I don’t remember the coke dude’s prices because that was much longer ago, but he was also totally fine with selling single grams.
Maybe my experience was different because I live in a college town, so the black market was supportive of the small purchases necessitated by student budgets.
We use both for guns, caliber is imperial (.22, .45, etc).
We exclusively use metric for science
I live in a country that’s gradually moved to metric over the last 30 years. The only thing we use imperial for now is height and pints in the pub. Older folks still use it for body weight.
Speed limits were less of an issue than you might think as they convert pretty closely - 30mph is very close to 50kph etc.
I love that a litre of water weighs a kilo and takes up 100 cubic centimetres.
The only thing we use imperial for now is height and pints in the pub.
There’s a really good reason for this, the first being that there is no metric equivalent of a pint because if there was it would be 500ml and an imperial pint is 570ml, nobody wants less beer in their pint. Poor Americans have a 475ml pint.
The height one (and any other remnants of imperial numeracy) is largely due to American cultural media exports and it’s easier for non Americans to convert to American imperial units due to exposure to both, to engage in effective communication.
Drugs, guns, baking, construction, manufacturing… actually, the better way to put it would be “literally fucking everywhere but the road signs and speedometers.”
You are funny. Most places do not use “both”. They use metric and… Sometimes they switch to metric for good measure (hah!). To believe that the whole world does the old convert around is confirming another US stereotype (everyone else is like we are and that’s a given) while you try to get us to stop mocking us stereotypes. Oh the irony!
The only irony here is your ignorant self mocking me for my alleged ignorance. Most countries don’t use metric and imperial, but they use metric and something.
And just as general advice, mocking and generalizing other people due to their nationality is a primitive and smoothbrained behavior. Grow up.
Ah… No mate, there are no “somethings” for “most countries”. Most of the world uses straight up metric and that’s it. What “local systems” do you know of that get used alongside metric?
And regarding the grow up part… See, here in Europe everybody will crack jokes about everybody else. French laugh at Germans, Polish mock the Spanish and everyone laughs at the British because they can’t come back at us since they had their little voting oopsie and now need a form to import jokes into the EU.
Remember that one kid that never got the joke, took what was said in jest at face value, got upset and thus mocked even more? Americans have a surprising tendency to be that kid.
“Remember that one kid that never got the joke, took what was said in jest at face value, got upset and thus mocked even more?”
Please stop, the irony, it’s too much.
There are “something” for a lot of things that are not in metrics.
Like tire sizes. My bow’s power is measured in pounds (and I should use inches there too normally. I don’t bother.) Screen sizes are in inches I think…
95% work in metrics. But there is always a little stuff in some weird units.
Are you saying that only the US really constantly has to do conversions between both systems? Are you saying that Americans are always doing a bunch of math that the rest of you aren’t?
I regret to inform you that… Yes, you are doing some math other’s don’t. Except for the British, those people are beyond savior with their obnoxious mix of weird unit collections.
Yes, only places where it is mixed is the anglosaxony… try to open to the world.
I use pounds because I do archery, where my bow’s power is measured with that unit, which I translate as 1/2 a kg. I don’t care that it’s inaccurate.
There are also inches (I think) for Tv and computer screens, which is shitty.
But no one else uses imperial.
I worked with croncrete blocks (prefabricated building elements) some years ago and I was all the time making fast calculations of sizes and weight and I cannot imagine making that in imperial (admittedly because I am not used, but in present case it would just have been massively impractical)
It’s true that the vast majority of the world uses only metric but Western English speaking countries tend to use a mix.
The UK is mixed, Ireland (where I am) is mostly metric but a person’s height is still mostly imperial and butter is sold in 454g packs (a pound) and older folks still measure their weight in stones and pounds, Canada uses a mix (my sister lives there and we discussed this recently) and the US uses metric where appropriate (science, military, medicine).
The vast majority of the world does not use imperial units.
When my American friends insist that feet and inches is just easier for them, I just nod in agreement and give them measurements using rods, chains and furlongs as well. If you’re going to go Imperial, you have to know 'em all. An acre is a chain by a furlong, totally logical as that would be 4x40 rods which is of course 43560 square feet. I guess it makes complete sense when your world is only a few furlongs across.
I can’t wait to see their new TV show that’s airing in
September^(a few days), I hope it’s gonna be good 😄🍿Could Always Use both it’s not confusing at all
I’ll just leave this here: https://youtu.be/iJymKowx8cY
TLDW: metric is better because all the different kinds of units were designed to work together.
Where as imperial units developed organically, within specific trades/use cases. They’re not all supposed to work together.
I use imperial because that’s what I was raised with, but I recognize metric is better in many ways. My only gripe with metric is the gap in units between Centimeters and Meters. A foot is convenient size for most things.
Jefferson actually intended to make metric standard in the US back in 1793. Unfortunately, the ship carrying the standard measurements from France was captured by pirates.
Wake up babe! I know what we’re gonna use our time machine for…
That’s amazing, these pirates had a huge effect on history and probably didn’t even know it or care.
Those pirates blew up our satellite!
Interestingly no one actually uses centimetres, in my line of work everything is measure in millimetres, even something over a metre. Average sheet steel size is 2400 x 1200 mm
I think a lot pf professionals that don’t mind big numbers do it this way
Back in my middle school planks and beams of wood always had their length marked in mm. I’ve seen floor plans of houses and apartments in mm, tens of thousands of them without thousand separators!
deleted by creator
It’s a decimal system, so t’s “all in 10th” deci=1/10. Meter > decimetre (dm) > centimetre (cm). So I think what you’re looking for is decimetre (dm) = tenth of a meter 😊
And centi denoting a factor of one hundredth and so on 🙃
Deci is actually 1/10. Deca is 10
Yup thnaks, was a typo 😊
Which is the „base“ for the litre: 1 cubic decimetre.
And originally it was defined as 1 kg water (under standard conditions), so 1000 L == 1 cubic meter == 1000 kg
My only gripe with metric is the gap in units between Centimeters and Meters. A foot is convenient size for most things.
Doesn’t seem to be an issue though, the decimetre is rarely used. Sometimes you find dL, decilitre, for 100 ml. It seems that 1, 100, and 1000 are convenient enough for most things.
Yeah, if you’ve got a measurement like 54 cm and you’d like that in decimeters for estimating how big it is, you literally just have to move the decimal point: 5.4 dm
You don’t have to actively convert it to dm for that. You just see a number of cm and will immediately know how much it would be in steps of 10 cm…
A foot is convenient size for most things.
Aka ‘30 cm’, it’s not hard to say. As someone from a metric country you just say the absolute cm value, or maybe ‘half a metre’, etc.
Also every single kid who grew up in a metric country intuitively knows how long 30cm is. That’s the length of a standard school ruler… in the pencil case of every child.
deleted by creator
say, you do understand that in metric you don’t convert between units, you just move a decimal left or right?
as i said elsewhere, in metric nobody cares where you put the decimal and people just decide what’s convenient for them or depending on the precision. nobody says ”we’re 153’267 cm from home” because you don’t need that precision. unless you work in road construction, because those tiny errors do add up, and you’d probably give that as 1532.67 m. i immediately know it’s roughly 1.5 km, and nobody would say ”away from home“ at that distance, so you probably don’t even know what exactly 153’267 cm is…
nobody uses 1/5th of a mile because nobody knows what that is. nobody has issues identifying 1/5th of a km as either 200 m or 0.2 km.
as i said elsewhere, you don’t convert units in imperial because it sucks. you do move decimals all the time in metric, because it’s easy.
I fully understand roughly what 1/5 of a mile would be without any effort. That sounds perfectly reasonable and recognizable for me and I doubt I’m alone. It’s because it’s the system I use. Yours works for you because you’re familiar with it. That’s all there is to it.
Completely missing the point by three freedom eagles per PBR keg, but you still needed to say something right?
How many feet are 1/5th mile + 1/3rd mile + 397 feet?
How many meters are 0.301 km + 0.65 km + 49 m?
Well no, same as no one says ‘476.46 inches from the bin’. Cm work fine up to 100, then you talk m, then km. ‘About two foot’ and ‘about sixty cm’ are just as easy to say, you’re just not used to the terminology
You think it is all convenient and easy to use intuitively, until i ask you, to convert how much water you use a day to how much water you use in a year and how much water your city uses.
Because your city measures in acre foot, which is 43,560 cubic feet or 325,850 US gallons. Actually there is a weird 3/7 of a gallon left
So you have no way of relating the ~20-40 gallons of water you use per day to the water use in your city ir the water you use in a year that is measured in centi-cubic-feet without pulling out a table and calculator.
Meanwhile i know that i use about 120 liters of water, which is 0.120 m3 a day. So my water bill in m3 is just a thousand liters per m3 and my city uses 230 million m3 a year or about 630.000 m3 a day. With that i can easily estimate that i use about 1/5.000.000 of my citys water.
So when we are talking about drought issues, or water demand etc. i can understand the values in the scientific and political debate, because i can actually relate them to my personal life.
The metric system empowers people because it makes SI units in any domain and of any size relateable and accessible. Meanwhile a kid in the US doesn’t know what a mile is until it learns that by being driven enough miles to get a feel for how many yards that is.
Yeah, no. Knowing a different measuring system isn’t gonna make me suddenly want to know the nitty-gritty details of things. The way water volume/use is measured in the US has nothing to do with how much people understand their water bill. If I really wanted to I’d just find something online to help me convert. Which I’d probably do on the other system because that’s just reality. You know those things because you care about them or were interested not because you use what you consider to be a superior system of measurement lol. You guys really try hard to make it seem like a way bigger deal than it is.
of course you are free to be interested or not. But given the necessities of the transofrmation in energy, water, land use, transportation etc. i find it crucial to be able to relate to the political discussion to make an informed choice. I know most people aren’t interested. But given that we are in a technological society we cannot afford not to relate to these things.
Problem with a foot is, that it creates a reference, to well a human foot. But my feet are 11" whereas my gfs feet are 9.4" and my fathers feet are 12".
So four foot for my gf would be three foot for my dad. That is a terribly inaccurate references.
We used to have the same thing for cloth, where the length was measured with your underarm. Guess the shorter traders got rich off it.
And just as you noticed people are different sizes so would have people of the past. They weren’t stupid or blind. Probably some room for haggling or less business, if you’re trying to screw folks.
Well buddy, you’re in luck because today you get to stop griping about something that’s been part of SI units for the entirety of SI units.
“If you’re under eighteen decimeters, swipe left.”
Standards perhaps a little too high
Interesting. Looks like a decimeter comes out to just under 4", so still a fair bit less than a foot. I guess that’s where a half-meter would come in. Honestly I think I just like imperial linguisticly, the terms and slang for all the units tickles me. Metric has a more sterile vibe. Which is fine, I reckon that was the whole idea of it!
Fun fact British imperial units are slightly different than American, because of course they are! This is an issue for folks that own, and work on, vintage British cars. American wrenches don’t fit!
In was just thinking of this video! There really are some legitimately good things about the imperial system, but metric is still better, but imo not quite enough better to take the work of converting everything in the country over to it
That’s why we have decimeters…
deleted by creator
In this thread: people bending over backwards to defend their insane, non-logical unit of measurement
Alternatively, people insisting that Americans must be math gods for using such a demanding and archaic system.
Logical, mathematically convenient, but not practically convenient. Without a measuring tool, there’s no good way to estimate anything besides a centimeter.
Every imperial unit of measure can be estimated whilst naked (but preferably clothed).
An inch is your distal thumb phalanx. A foot is your foot. A mile is, or was at one point, roughly 1,000 paces.
The weather can be estimated by going outside. Is it too hot? It’s in the upper third of the 100 degree scale. Too cold? Lower third, might snow. Cool enough to fully dress, but not too cold, right in the middle.
A healthy, big person is about 200 lbs. A very small person is about 100 lbs.
Converting between these units is useful in science, which is why science uses metric. But you could live your entire life on earth and never need to know how many distal phanages are in 1,000 paces. It literally never comes up. Who cares?
It’s why units are divided into fractions, rather than into a decimal system.
By the way, the only reason we use a base 10 numbering system in the first place is because we have ten fingers and it was easier for early mathematicians to count. But I digress.
If you’re dividing a length of rope, and all you have is the rope, it’s simple to divide it in half, and then half again, and then again in half. You could even divide into thirds, if you were feeling frisky. You just fold it over itself until the lengths are even. There are two friendly numbers that are difficult to do that with, though. Can you guess what they are? If you guessed 5 and 10, you nailed it, good job.
Same with piles of grain or hunks of beef or chunks of precious metals.
But what about units of volume, you ask? I don’t have a part of my body that holds roughly 8 oz of fluid to pour out. No, for that you’ll need a cup. Just a cup. Not a graduated cup with a bunch of little lines down the side. 1 cup. Or half a cup, or a third, or maybe a quarter cup. Again, easily divisible for easy measuring without any special tools.
But a gallon, you protest. A gallon is 16 cups! What the fuck is 16 cups good for? Why not 10 or 100, or create a decigallon for simple math? Because 16 can be divided in half 4 times. Measuring out portions of the whole is as simple as pouring out equal portions into similarly sized containers. Divisible numbers are easier to use without graduated equipment.
And that’s why time is measured in 24 hours, each hour is 60 minutes, each minute is 60 seconds. There’s a ton of history there, and we’ll ignore for this discussion the inaccuracy of measuring a day or a year. If the metric system is entirely superior, why don’t you demand we all switch to metric time? A year will still be roughly 365 days (again, setting aside the inaccuracy) but we could divide the day into 10 equal metric hours, or mours, and those mours into 100 metric minutes, or metrinutes, and then those metrinutes into 100 metric seconds, or meconds. 1 mecond would be 0.864 seconds, and a metrinute would be 1.44 minutes, which to most people would be an imperceptible difference in time. Hey, how many seconds is 1.44 minutes? You don’t know without a calculator because we don’t use metric for time, and it probably never bothered you once before now. What an insane, non-logical unit of measure time is.
Yes, metric let’s us convert millimeters to kilometers, or helps us determine how many calories it take increase 1 cubic centimeter of water by 10 degrees kelvin. It helps with those things because the units are arbitrarily defined to make the math easier, not to make the measurement easier. But that’s it, there’s no additional sanity, no additional logic. It’s easier to convert between units via math, because it was designed to be easier to convert between units via math. There are no additional benefits to the metric system.
Absolutely incredible copypasta
I honestly love this take. The fact that people are responding so negatively to a damned decent argument for units that can typically be halved a couple of times without messing around with decimals only shows how irrational the motivation to insist that one is more precise is. Might as well be a sports team the way even glancing in the direction of nuance provokes upset.
How dare you have reasons and explaining them so thoroughly. I’m here to hate people because they are dumb.
What a fat load of bullshit
OK, but this is why certain Imperial measurements caught hold, and why Americans still use it. We also use metric for the things metric was created to measure.
They’re just the arbitrary numbers you know. I know below 10 is cold and below 20 is chilly. Above 20 is warm and above 30 is hot.
I know what a liter looks like and I know roughly how far 100m is. You learn the normal numbers for each system by using them. But metric is logical and imperial is random.
What’s a “fat load” in metric?
Anything above a BMI of 100.
Brilliant. Now if we only used base 12 numbering system, things would be even easier to halve.
Why stop at base 12. Let’s go base-60. Divisible by 2,3,4,5 and 6.
All-in, let’s do base 210. Divisible by 2, 3, 5 and 7, covering all the small primes.
And we can do even better: base-420 which is also divisible by 4 and a funnier number.
Because at some point the difficulty increases with regard to the number of symbols to memorize. A balance exists. I surmise it’s 12. Only 2 more to memorize than 10 and more ways to halve and double than 10. Easier for mental work.
16 is not hard, we use it for hexadecimal all the time. Could as easily use base 32, if it’s a matter of memorizing symbols.
Base 30 would be better overall: divisible by 1, 2, 3, 5, and everyone reading this knows more than 30 basic symbols (0-9,a-z).
Base 12 is better than base 10, but base 16, aka Hexadecimal is better still.
Base 16 is only divisible by a single prime, just a fancy name for base 2.
Why? (genuine question)
This is either a way too elaborate troll or one of the dumbest things I have ever read and I can’t figure out which it is.
Point to the thing I said that was not true.
Wow you are actually serious. Okay here we go.
- Units of measurement are made to be accurate, while most of your rant talks about “estimating”. Being easily estimated adds zero value and it’s something you invented to try and make your point.
- Disregarding point 1, every single thing you said can be reversed by someone used to metric. I have no clue how to estimate things in imperial, but I can easily estimate 1 cm, 1 meter, 1 litre, 1kg, etc with a similar margin of error as you can estimate imperial, because I’m used to it.
- Your point about temperatures is the most boneheaded of the entire paragraph. Go to Chicago, ask someone what is “kind of hot” and what is “kind of cold”, and compare it to a New Orleans resident. Wanna bet they give wildly different answers? Also, again: what is the merit of this? If it’s 30 degrees C outside I consider it hot, 5 or below is cold. What does it matter which numbers you find important?
- About your rope, or your piles of grain and hunks of beef. I have no clue what your point is there. Do you know what we do when we want more precision? We just move the decimal point. You want 1/5 of a kg of beef? Might want to ask for 200 grams instead. I don’t even know what kind of point you’re trying to make there.
- Metric is standardised. A metre in Belgium is the same as a metre in France, and a metre in Norway, etc. You’re talking about a ounce. You mean an imperial ounce or a US ounce? Do you like pints? Do you want a US pint or prefer an Imperial one? Space ships have crashed because of nonsense like this.
As a final example, let’s go beyond units of measurement. If I place a book on the table and ask you to estimate the value of it: you might say something like 20$? I might say something like €20? We just use the currency we’re familiar with. What if I ask you to estimate the value of that same book in Vietnamese Dong without looking up anything? 50? 100? 200 000? I wouldn’t know. I don’t know if you buy a pencil sharpener or a car with 200k Vietnamese Dong. But a Vietnamese person would know, right?
You’re talking purely from a perspective of someone that is very familiar with one system and has very little knowledge of the other. It’s not that you -by your own omission- can only estimate something like a centimeter and not much else that the rest of the world breaks down when they see a 3 centimeter rope. Both systems might have merit, but metric is a clearly superior system in almost any perceivable and objective way that I can think of.
OK I’m looking up the history of the metric system now.
Have a go at ‘The Measure of All Things’ by Ken Alder, a very interesting book on that subject.
Thanks! Bookmarked (I got a ton of lemmy bookmarks, lots of reading to do lol)
I feel like a lot of this is based on what you grew up with and you eventually related it to something to make it easier for you.
Like a cm is the width of a fingernail. A dm(10cm) is the size of a middle finger. 100m is 1 minute of walking. I know 1 metre is my normal stride.
Is it too hot? 30s. Is it cold? Less than 10. Is there snow? Less than 0. Is it cool enough to fully dress but not too cold? Around 20.
Big person? 100kg. Small person? 50kg.
The point is that you can make any system relatable.
Of course you’re right. The point isn’t that one is better than another, the point is that Imperial was historically easy to share and use. There’s a sense among metric users that the imperial system is stupid, illogical, unwieldy, and useless (see the comic and almost every comment in the thread). None of those things are true, and the advantages of the metric system hardly ever come up for most people.
It’s easy to hur dur Americans stupid, but the reality is always more complex.
To be fair, if it truly were more convenient, countries like Japan, China, India or the Middle East that had no cultural reason to prefer one over the other, wouldn’t have chosen metric.
I don’t think Americans are either stupid or more inefficient for having the clearly more impractical system, but I can’t help feel that the only reason they’ve kept their very odd measuring system is that they will never recognize anything ever being better in other countries than it is in theirs.
In a way, the imperial stubbornness among Americans feels like yet another display of American exceptionalism and their odd superiority complex, than anything logical or even pragmatic.
Oh it’s absolutely just based on where you grew up. And there’s nothing wrong with that. Everyone uses a rather stupid time system compared to metric measurements, but we stick with it because that’s what everyone is used to.
A foot is a foot. Fantastic. Glad to know everyone has the same sized feet.
And the same length on their legs so we all pace the same distance.
I would say good troll, but it just seems too long to be ironic.
Is every location at the exact same elevation? Varying elevations have varying atmospheric pressures. You’ve got the Netherlands at 0 m elevation, and places in Bolivia like La Paz and El Alto which are ~4000 m elevation. That’s an atmospheric pressure of 101 kPa for the Netherlands and 57.2-69.7 kPa for the Bolivian cities (I don’t have the time to interpolate the data table unfortunately). This corresponds to a drop in the boiling point of water from 100 C to approx 86.5 C.
Both systems have just as arbitrary reference points. They also both have absurd conversions – why isn’t it 100 seconds to the minute, 100 minutes to the hour, 10 hours to a day, 10 days to a week, etc? It would make my work so much easier if time was powers of 10, but that’s where metric stops?
Good thing that Celcius is scaleable with Kelvin, which is scaleable with Pascal and meters. So you can easily calculate very precisely what temperature the water will boil at depending on your elevation.
Time is measured at a base of 12. Because it’s far easier to create mechanical watches on a base of 12.
What is important is that it’s a standardized measurement. We all have the same second.
I’m not sure if you’re trying to make arguments for Fahrenheit or if you’re just reciting your 7:th grade physics homework
There aren’t many instances in normal life where accuracy and precision are that important. Modern humans can measure distances with lasers and satellite coordinates. You probably own a tape measure and at least one type of scale. But unless you’re building something, baking something, or selling something by weight, estimates are almost as good as knowing something precisely.
We see the same in countries that us metric. Most people estimate how many meters, kgs, or liters things are because taking the time to accurately measure isn’t necessary. Maybe your phone tracks your daily jog, but that’s only going to be accurate to within a few meters, and most people would round off to the nearest significant digit anyway.
Yes. People estimate things. Because we don’t carry around a scale in our pockets. What does that have to do with anything?
The point of metric system is that things should be scaleable. And relatable. Between different types of measurements, such as weight and volume.
Yes, that’s the point. The imperial system has been succesful and remains popular because people do carry around (rough) scales with us most of the time, and because the advantage of being accurate and scalable really isn’t that useful in day to day living. Having a single unit of measure for the length of a aheet of paper and the distance to the nearest city isn’t a significant advantage for most people in most applications. I don’t need to know how many inches are in a mile, because the conversion usually isn’t necessary. The point of the metric system you’ve described has no advantage in most normal use cases, and we use it when it does have an advantage.
What do you mean “remain popular”? The imperial system has roughly 500 million users. While metric has over 7 billion.
And even in the countries where imperial is used, the scientific community in them still use metric.
How can you even attempt to talk about the advantage of normal use, when you don’t even know how to use them?
Metric is a tool. Just because you don’t know how to use the tool, doesn’t mean it’s not advantageous.
Ofc conversions in imperial isn’t necessary, it’s gibberish. No normal person will be able to relate the two.
Your argument boils down to you telling us writing is pointless because no one knows how to read.
Ofc they can’t read when there’s nothing to read.
How can you even attempt to talk about the advantage of normal use, when you don’t even know how to use them?
Metric is a tool. Just because you don’t know how to use the tool, doesn’t mean it’s not advantageous.
Ofc conversions in imperial isn’t necessary, it’s gibberish. No normal person will be able to relate the two.
Are you under the impression that Americans don’t know how to use the metric system? We learn to use it in elementary school. We regularly go between the two and relate them to each other.
Your comment is unnecessarily arrogant based on complete ignorance.
There aren’t many instances in normal life where accuracy and precision are that important […] unless you’re building something, baking something, or selling something by weight
Yeah, because building, baking, or selling something by weight are totally not important and absolutely common “instances in normal life” 🤡
Good fucking grief…
Correct, the vast majority of humans won’t build, bake, or sell anything that requires scalable units of measure. A cup of milk doesn’t need to be precisely 237 mL of milk, nor would most people need to scale their recipe to feed 1,000. If you’re building a shed, dimensional lumber is plenty precise, and it doesn’t require converting the height of a ceiling into miles.
Jesus wept 🤦♀️
You do understand that precision has absolutely NOTHING, at all, to do with the units you’re using? Right?
And yes, when you’re baking, you need precision. Try making consistently good bread just by rule of thumb, I’ll wait for your results.
BTW, measuring things by weight is not just more precise by far, most of the time it’s also easier and faster.
But hey, be my guest trying to gauge that cup on your beaker that’s 10% off.
And yes, if your butcher sells you meat, you would like to pay what you bought, and not 5% more.
And it doesn’t matter if that’s g, lbs, oompah loompahs or whatever. 5% of something is 5%.
FFS is this a knuckle-dragging contest here?
For someone so belligerent about something so inconsequential, you’re also entirely wrong about almost everything. Ice your britches.
You do understand that precision has absolutely NOTHING, at all, to do with the units you’re using? Right?
Baldercrap. One of the primary advantages of the metric system is that it can scale down for additional precision as necessary. Metric easily scales infinitely in both directions, so you only need one unit of measure for each type of measurement. Imperial units don’t easily scale, so the level of precision is tightly bound to the unit you select. You’re not going to get the same precision from miles that I will from inches. So that was a stupid thing to say angrily.
And yes, when you’re baking, you need precision. Try making consistently good bread just by rule of thumb, I’ll wait for your results.
Yeah, that’s why I brought up baking as an example. But the cool thing about baking is that recipes exist in both metric and imperial units. I can measure my flour in ounces if I want, and take a teaspoon of salt, half a cup of milk, one large egg, and there’s never any reason to convert between those units because who cares? I’m not making dough for 1,000 loaves, nor would I ever need to figure one one-thousanth of a loaf, so metric doesn’t provide any advantages for the typical home baker.
BTW, measuring things by weight is not just more precise by far, most of the time it’s also easier and faster.
With a digital scale, sure. I have one and it’s great. I highly recommend it especially for baking. But digital scales weren’t always widely available or inexpensive, and most people don’t own one. Nearly everyone who uses a kitchen to cook will have access to measuring scoops. And not for nothing, but my grandma never measured anything and was an excellent baker. It took years of trial and error but she could adjust her recipes to a humid day to make perfect baked goods.
And yes, if your butcher sells you meat, you would like to pay what you bought, and not 5% more.
And it doesn’t matter if that’s g, lbs, oompah loompahs or whatever. 5% of something is 5%.
That’s why butchers use scales. Grocery stores also use scales for produce and deli produces like cheese. Would it surprise you to learn that the vast majority of humans in America are not butchers or grocers? Their math might be easier with metric, especially when ordering bulk quantities, but for the typical customer, they want an 8 oz steak and a half pound of cheese. So why don’t butchers and grocers use metric?
Because their customers don’t use metric, and there are more customers than butchers or grocers. The conversion between units of measure, the entire reason metric exists, just isn’t a daily consideration. It makes no difference if the steak and the cheese weigh the same, or if you can scale up and down.
Also, another tangential point, most of the math today is handled by computers. Figuring the unit price of a side of beef or a pallet of cheese isn’t something people need to do in their head anymore. The inventory database will effortlessly convert between pounds and ounces and stones and tons. It can even convert everything to metric if you like.
FFS is this a knuckle-dragging contest here?
Gosh, you’re rude. Maybe spend less time attacking me personally and try to think of a valid argument. Or better yet, just go back and actually comprehend what I wrote, and maybe you’ll understand that our positions aren’t really that far apart.
precision has absolutely NOTHING, at all, to do with the units you’re using
1 degree Fahrenheit contains the same amount of heat as 1.8 degrees Celsius. The base unit provides more definition. If you’re limited to just whole numbers, Fahrenheit will give you more precise information about heat.
Of course, decimals exist, so it really isn’t a big deal.
It’s a measurement system for humans not calculators.
It’s a measurement system for dumbasses who are scared of base 10 operations
A foot is a foot. Fantastic. Glad to know everyone has the same sized feet.
First off, it’s an estimate. Your feet don’t need to be exactly 12 inches/1 foot. If your feet are only 10 inches long, it’s still useful information because you know your margin of error.
That being said, there’s no reason why you can’t also do this trick with the metric system. You would just need to divide the amount-of-human-foot-length by around 4 to get your human -foot-measurement into meters.
Every imperial unit of measure can be estimated whilst naked (but preferably clothed).
so I can ask a 9 yr old child to walk out naked to the streets to measure a thing in their foot and:
- I’ll get the exact same answer as if I send an adult priest naked to the street to measure the same thing in their foot
- I’ll not get the priest to rape the kid
?
Wow good job making both of the most beaten-into-the-ground jokes simultaneously. You win the award for most unoriginal.
Yes, officer, this comment right here.
the officer also sees the naked child
ennakes themself
“well, time to fill the imperial metric quota”
You know, this convinced me…
that I wouldn’t mind metric time actually
I actually wrote a paper in high school extolling the virtues of metric time. It was not persuasive.
RemindMe 10 Megaseconds
And plenty of people who don’t really care to understand how deep the roots of inch stuff is. Most people have no clue how much aerospace is commanding the need for Inch. (ALL and every aerospace fasteners are inch.)
Curious, since NASA uses metric. How do the two industries work together?
interestingly enough, there is an incident where a unit conversion cause a spacecraft to crash.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mars_Climate_Orbiter
NASA specifies that companies who work with NASA should use metric units as a part of the contract. Lockheed produced software that output in imperial units and it caused the orbiter to flame out.
It’s not entirely without logic. Base 12 is actually better that base 10 for a start, as it allows for a lot more fractions that have clean representations, so 12 inches in a foot is fine. The next thing is that people seem to think we have all of these strange units with strange conversions, when in reality we have 3 units for short distances, and then a seperate unit for long distances. 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, and then nobody cares how long a mile is in terms of feet or yards. Once you realize that the mile is not even really part of the same measuring system as inches, feet and yards, the weird conversion makes sense. We exclusively use miles to talk about long distances above 0.1 miles, and then yards are used below 500 yards (which has an overlap of 324 yards). And then for the logic, it is entirely based on actual human scale shit. A foot is called a foot because it is roughly the size of your foot. A yard is approximately how long one stride is. Saying something is 100 yards away means it is approximate 100 steps away. Obviously there will be a bit of variance for how accurate that will be for any given person (and children will have to base it off of an adult obviously), but because it is based more on human things it is more useful for measuring human scale things. It was designed to not use decimals or large numbers because humans don’t comprehend those very well.
There are some places that do use a base 12 number system.
Again, I wasn’t defending it, just explaining it.
“Why do they use the much more complicated system?” “Nobody actually knows.”
There are so many baseless radixals in the comments.
When I’m doing things that require precision: grams and °C
When I’m telling how the room or the temp outside is, °F
Why? Because 0°F to 100°F is way more reasonable for telling comfort than -17.78°C to 37.78°C
It’s not that hard to use both and anyone incapable of doing so is an idiot.
The only thing I still like Fahrenheit for is temperature. There’s a wider range for the human livable temperature, so you get more persision. For everything else metric all the way.
And yes, it’s 100% my American brain can’t figure it out in Celcius no matter how hard I try lmao. 10’s are chill, 20’s are nice, 30’s sind heiß. But in the end, I end up thinking Fahrenheit and going from there every time.
how about we all agree that the best system is american units with metric prefixes. After all it is obvious that it takes an hours to drive 318 kilofeet
