The metric system sucks
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From: Bart Goddard on 2 Feb 2010 21:07 "Heidi Graw" <hgraw(a)telus.net> wrote in news:tC4an.64378$PH1.2203(a)edtnps82: > He prefers the metric. It's easier to learn and easier to use. > I also prefer metric for those same reasons. Which is also a reason for choosing Cosmetology school over Engineering. B. -- Cheerfully resisting change since 1959.
From: Joshua Cranmer on 2 Feb 2010 21:19 On 02/02/2010 05:54 PM, Andrew Usher wrote: > I. Introduction I know better than to succumb, but oh well. > LEFTIST POLITICS is one of the great errors of our age. [ By leftism I > mean specifically the quasi-religious crusading ideology identified by > Ted Kaczyncki (I always have trouble spelling that name!), That is obviously evidence of a homogeneous ethnic environment where you grew up. Eastern European names aren't really that bad to spell. Or pronounce, for that matter. > One such place is the imposition of the metric system. All conversion > to the metric system today, and not only that compelled by government, > can safely be put under this head, as anyone that had good reasons to > convert unrelated to ideology would have done so already. You overestimate the propensity of people to change when there are many clear good reasons to do so. Inertia counts for a lot in politics and general management. Indeed, it probably counts even more so in politics: it's extraordinarily hard to undo something. Just ask the U.S. Congress, European Commission, or the Japanese Diet [1]. > The metric system for our purposes can be identified with the SI > [ Note that SI is a French abbreviation, reminding everyone of the > French nature of the idea ], Oh, so it's bad just because it's French? If you want to boycott French ideas, please reverse all of your chemistry knowledge back to discussions about "phlogiston" (possibly even earlier). Which probably means you should give up all synthetic fibers or drugs. And you'll probably need to start learning to sew by hand, for I believe the French were instrumental in the development of sewing machines. And the French also made significant forays into mechanical looms (including, most notably, the Jacquard loom, the first use of programming a century before the Babbage engines and two centuries before the first electronic computers). And having a French acronym does not necessarily mean it's a French invention, to boot. French was, and still remains, an important business language. Until the middle of the 20th century, it was more likely to be the international language one learned instead of, say, English. > The first of all the metric lies is that we must adopt metric because > it is the world standard. The costs of translation between languages, > though, certainly exceed those of translation between measuring > systems, should we then ask that everyone speak only English? One of the Mars rovers crashed into Mars. Why? Because one group of people were using SI units and the others Imperial units. I'm sure that the potential damage due to mixing up unit systems is much worse than mixing up languages. This would mostly be due to the fact that you often calculate using units and not with languages. Unfortunately, trying to statically cart around units is a lot harder in practice than you would think. > And there is no more reason that we should > necessarily adopt metric than that they should adopt our measures, > when standardisation really is required, which is much less often than > they would have you believe. Except the fact that approximately 5.3% of the world population (U.S., Liberia, and Burma) uses the Imperial units and 94.8% use SI. Even if you want to measure by GDP impact, you've still got a hefty 20-80% split. > Finally, and related to my first point, the cost of converting to > metric is constantly minimised, and invariably said to pay for itself > within a short time even though there is little evidence for it. But > the reverse - that converting from the metric to the traditional units > - is never examined at all, and surely if it did ever come up they > would do the exact opposite. This shows that they are not truly > interested in saving money or time at all, but only in promoting > metric for its own sake. The cost is in conversion, period. Mostly because most people of my generation would be used to thinking in Imperial units as opposed to SI; for Europeans, they would be used to thinking in SI. I have a pretty good intuition of what 50�F looks like, but not of 20�C. The inverse would be true for non-Americans. > Above I compared the difficulty of learning measures with that of > learning a language, and that is appropriate here also; for learning > the differing words for the units in the traditional system - as inch, > foot, mile or ounce, pound, ton - as not much more difficult than > learning a similar number of new words in a language, or not very hard > at all. In addition, the traditional names are shorter and can't be > confused. Here are all of the prefixes that I see commonly used for measurements: milli centi <none> kilo Most people will know of "mega", "giga", and "tera" from computers, no matter where they live (even if there is confusion between 1024-based and 1000-based values for these units). > However, now with SI, the metric bureaucrats > and their mindset are pushing the universal applicability of SI > prefixes, introducing absurdities like 'zepto' and 'yotta' and God > knows what will follow them. This is insane: how can we expect people > to keep straight so many prefixes? In contrast scientific notation is > always unambiguous. How often do you measure stuff in terms of 10^21? Indeed, the media seems to think that most people already can't handle numbers larger than a trillion (million billion and billion billion starts becoming popular). You've magically missed the argument that most people use when advocating metric: units are a lot more intuitive. How many feet are in a rod? How many square feet per acre? Acres per square mile--are you talking about statute or nautical miles? Please convert knots to miles per hour. And then there are fluid ounces (distinct from avoirdupois ounces and troy ounces!), gills, cups, pints, quarts, gallons... and barrels and hogsheads. So, if the United States imports 13.1 million barrels of oil per day, and the average car gets 27 mpg, how many miles would the average car be able to drive on the imported oil, assuming perfect conversion of oil to gasoline? [ Snip hoopla about base units ] Base units really don't make that much of a difference. Consider it a historical aberration. > In angle, the smaller divisions are less used (or known), yet degrees > are universal and seem to be understood by almost everybody. I seem to use radians a lot more when doing calculations. And I'm sure many surveyors may prefer gradients to degrees. > The English units of measure are part of the English language, and > indeed, of every European language once, even French. Most > particularly, it is true of Latin, the language of our common > heritage, and where we got our traditional units from. You are so insensitive, you know that? What about the Japanese and their koku of rice? Or their ri? The Chinese li? The ancient cubit? You're being so Amerocentric. And what about the Anglo-Saxons' units, before the Romans imposed their unit system onto them? [1] I know, I know, I shouldn't be so biased towards the economically-advantaged nations, but unfortunately my media sources provide me with too little information on third world countries. -- Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. -- Donald E. Knuth
From: Andrew Usher on 2 Feb 2010 23:53 On Feb 2, 8:19 pm, Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeo...(a)verizon.invalid> wrote: > > The metric system for our purposes can be identified with the SI > > [ Note that SI is a French abbreviation, reminding everyone of the > > French nature of the idea ], > > Oh, so it's bad just because it's French? If you want to boycott French > ideas, please reverse all of your chemistry knowledge back to > discussions about "phlogiston" (possibly even earlier). No I don't, certainly not in pure science. This is only a straw man. > And having a French acronym does not necessarily mean it's a French > invention, to boot. But it is a French invention, indisputably. > > The first of all the metric lies is that we must adopt metric because > > it is the world standard. The costs of translation between languages, > > though, certainly exceed those of translation between measuring > > systems, should we then ask that everyone speak only English? > > One of the Mars rovers crashed into Mars. Why? Because one group of > people were using SI units and the others Imperial units. I did mention this in my post. Had NASA never started to convert things like this, the problem could never have arisen. > > And there is no more reason that we should > > necessarily adopt metric than that they should adopt our measures, > > when standardisation really is required, which is much less often than > > they would have you believe. > > Except the fact that approximately 5.3% of the world population (U.S., > Liberia, and Burma) uses the Imperial units and 94.8% use SI. Even if > you want to measure by GDP impact, you've still got a hefty 20-80% split. Now this is oversimplified. All countries including the US use metric for some purposes. Equally, there is some use of English in countries that are officially metric. But so what of the numbers? The US clearly has a heck of a lot of power to impose its will on the rest of the world. > > Finally, and related to my first point, the cost of converting to > > metric is constantly minimised, and invariably said to pay for itself > > within a short time even though there is little evidence for it. But > > the reverse - that converting from the metric to the traditional units > > - is never examined at all, and surely if it did ever come up they > > would do the exact opposite. This shows that they are not truly > > interested in saving money or time at all, but only in promoting > > metric for its own sake. > > The cost is in conversion, period. If that's so, then there's no reason to prefer metric. > Mostly because most people of my > generation would be used to thinking in Imperial units as opposed to SI; > for Europeans, they would be used to thinking in SI. I have a pretty > good intuition of what 50�F looks like, but not of 20�C. The inverse > would be true for non-Americans. I suppose so. But there's no reason one can't acquire both, whether you're American or not. And yet, the metric people tell us how easy it is for us to understand Celsius, but pretend that no one else in the world can understand Fahrenheit. > Here are all of the prefixes that I see commonly used for measurements: > milli > centi > <none> > kilo Obviously you're not counting electricity, in which many prefixes beyond those are used regularly. Anyway, the point was that the number of independent words is not really any strike against traditional units. > Most people will know of "mega", "giga", and "tera" from computers, no > matter where they live (even if there is confusion between 1024-based > and 1000-based values for these units). There wouldn't be any if not for (as usual) the meddling of standards organisations. 1024-based units are to be used for computer data (and there's a sound reason why) and 1000-based units for everything else. > > However, now with SI, the metric bureaucrats > > and their mindset are pushing the universal applicability of SI > > prefixes, introducing absurdities like 'zepto' and 'yotta' and God > > knows what will follow them. This is insane: how can we expect people > > to keep straight so many prefixes? In contrast scientific notation is > > always unambiguous. > > How often do you measure stuff in terms of 10^21? Not often, I suppose. But how do you specify, say, the mass of the Earth? > You've magically missed the argument that most people use when > advocating metric: units are a lot more intuitive. How many feet are in > a rod? How many square feet per acre? Acres per square mile--are you > talking about statute or nautical miles? Please convert knots to miles > per hour. And then there are fluid ounces (distinct from avoirdupois > ounces and troy ounces!), gills, cups, pints, quarts, gallons... and > barrels and hogsheads. I know all these conversions in my head. Most people don't, but they will quickly pick up any that they need to use frequently. And how much calculation do people do without a machine anymore? > So, if the United States imports 13.1 million barrels of oil per day, > and the average car gets 27 mpg, how many miles would the average car be > able to drive on the imported oil, assuming perfect conversion of oil to > gasoline? About 20 million vehicle-miles. More precision is unnecessary because of the conditions. That took me about 15 seconds to do mentally. > [ Snip hoopla about base units ] > > Base units really don't make that much of a difference. Consider it a > historical aberration. No, the fact that the kilogram (base unit) has a prefix is a historical aberration but I don't mention that. The fact that the 'seven base units', adopted in the 1960s, are promoted as illustrating the logical nature of the SI, is not. > > In angle, the smaller divisions are less used (or known), yet degrees > > are universal and seem to be understood by almost everybody. > > I seem to use radians a lot more when doing calculations. And I'm sure > many surveyors may prefer gradients to degrees. Radians are of course preferred for math but in practical engineering they have an obvious problem in not being rationally related to the circle. And grads (not 'gradients', that's something different!) may be used by some surveyors, but the great majority of people only know degrees. Andrew Usher
From: Frogwatch on 2 Feb 2010 23:59 On Feb 2, 9:19 pm, Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeo...(a)verizon.invalid> wrote: > On 02/02/2010 05:54 PM, Andrew Usher wrote: > > > I. Introduction > > I know better than to succumb, but oh well. > > > LEFTIST POLITICS is one of the great errors of our age. [ By leftism I > > mean specifically the quasi-religious crusading ideology identified by > > Ted Kaczyncki (I always have trouble spelling that name!), > > That is obviously evidence of a homogeneous ethnic environment where you > grew up. Eastern European names aren't really that bad to spell. Or > pronounce, for that matter. > > > One such place is the imposition of the metric system. All conversion > > to the metric system today, and not only that compelled by government, > > can safely be put under this head, as anyone that had good reasons to > > convert unrelated to ideology would have done so already. > > You overestimate the propensity of people to change when there are many > clear good reasons to do so. Inertia counts for a lot in politics and > general management. Indeed, it probably counts even more so in politics: > it's extraordinarily hard to undo something. Just ask the U.S. Congress, > European Commission, or the Japanese Diet [1]. > > > The metric system for our purposes can be identified with the SI > > [ Note that SI is a French abbreviation, reminding everyone of the > > French nature of the idea ], > > Oh, so it's bad just because it's French? If you want to boycott French > ideas, please reverse all of your chemistry knowledge back to > discussions about "phlogiston" (possibly even earlier). Which probably > means you should give up all synthetic fibers or drugs. And you'll > probably need to start learning to sew by hand, for I believe the French > were instrumental in the development of sewing machines. And the French > also made significant forays into mechanical looms (including, most > notably, the Jacquard loom, the first use of programming a century > before the Babbage engines and two centuries before the first electronic > computers). > > And having a French acronym does not necessarily mean it's a French > invention, to boot. French was, and still remains, an important business > language. Until the middle of the 20th century, it was more likely to be > the international language one learned instead of, say, English. > > > The first of all the metric lies is that we must adopt metric because > > it is the world standard. The costs of translation between languages, > > though, certainly exceed those of translation between measuring > > systems, should we then ask that everyone speak only English? > > One of the Mars rovers crashed into Mars. Why? Because one group of > people were using SI units and the others Imperial units. I'm sure that > the potential damage due to mixing up unit systems is much worse than > mixing up languages. This would mostly be due to the fact that you often > calculate using units and not with languages. Unfortunately, trying to > statically cart around units is a lot harder in practice than you would > think. > > > And there is no more reason that we should > > necessarily adopt metric than that they should adopt our measures, > > when standardisation really is required, which is much less often than > > they would have you believe. > > Except the fact that approximately 5.3% of the world population (U.S., > Liberia, and Burma) uses the Imperial units and 94.8% use SI. Even if > you want to measure by GDP impact, you've still got a hefty 20-80% split. > > > Finally, and related to my first point, the cost of converting to > > metric is constantly minimised, and invariably said to pay for itself > > within a short time even though there is little evidence for it. But > > the reverse - that converting from the metric to the traditional units > > - is never examined at all, and surely if it did ever come up they > > would do the exact opposite. This shows that they are not truly > > interested in saving money or time at all, but only in promoting > > metric for its own sake. > > The cost is in conversion, period. Mostly because most people of my > generation would be used to thinking in Imperial units as opposed to SI; > for Europeans, they would be used to thinking in SI. I have a pretty > good intuition of what 50�F looks like, but not of 20�C. The inverse > would be true for non-Americans. > > > Above I compared the difficulty of learning measures with that of > > learning a language, and that is appropriate here also; for learning > > the differing words for the units in the traditional system - as inch, > > foot, mile or ounce, pound, ton - as not much more difficult than > > learning a similar number of new words in a language, or not very hard > > at all. In addition, the traditional names are shorter and can't be > > confused. > > Here are all of the prefixes that I see commonly used for measurements: > milli > centi > <none> > kilo > > Most people will know of "mega", "giga", and "tera" from computers, no > matter where they live (even if there is confusion between 1024-based > and 1000-based values for these units). > > > However, now with SI, the metric bureaucrats > > and their mindset are pushing the universal applicability of SI > > prefixes, introducing absurdities like 'zepto' and 'yotta' and God > > knows what will follow them. This is insane: how can we expect people > > to keep straight so many prefixes? In contrast scientific notation is > > always unambiguous. > > How often do you measure stuff in terms of 10^21? Indeed, the media > seems to think that most people already can't handle numbers larger than > a trillion (million billion and billion billion starts becoming popular). > > You've magically missed the argument that most people use when > advocating metric: units are a lot more intuitive. How many feet are in > a rod? How many square feet per acre? Acres per square mile--are you > talking about statute or nautical miles? Please convert knots to miles > per hour. And then there are fluid ounces (distinct from avoirdupois > ounces and troy ounces!), gills, cups, pints, quarts, gallons... and > barrels and hogsheads. > > So, if the United States imports 13.1 million barrels of oil per day, > and the average car gets 27 mpg, how many miles would the average car be > able to drive on the imported oil, assuming perfect conversion of oil to > gasoline? > > [ Snip hoopla about base units ] > > Base units really don't make that much of a difference. Consider it a > historical aberration. > > > In angle, the smaller divisions are less used (or known), yet degrees > > are universal and seem to be understood by almost everybody. > > I seem to use radians a lot more when doing calculations. And I'm sure > many surveyors may prefer gradients to degrees. > > > The English units of measure are part of the English language, and > > indeed, of every European language once, even French. Most > > particularly, it is true of Latin, the language of our common > > heritage, and where we got our traditional units from. > > You are so insensitive, you know that? What about the Japanese and their > koku of rice? Or their ri? The Chinese li? The ancient cubit? You're > being so Amerocentric. And what about the Anglo-Saxons' units, before > the Romans imposed their unit system onto them? > > [1] I know, I know, I shouldn't be so biased towards the > economically-advantaged nations, but unfortunately my media sources > provide me with too little information on third world countries. > > -- > Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not > tried it. -- Donald E. Knuth Whenever I need to do any calculations involving physical quantities, I first convert to metric, do the calculation and then convert back to english. This avoids bizarro conversions such as feet in a mile or psi to something else. I even had one professor who worked in a system where all independent constants (c, q, permativitty of free space, etc) were all equal to 1. Using SI, you could then simply insert the correct units at the end knowing it was correct with no conversions. One of the few truly arbitrary things in metric system is temp using Celsius but true SI uses Kelvin whose units of temp happens to be the same size as Celsius degrees. In SI units, I can readily calculate things as varied as time to fall to earth for an object, period of a pendulum, amount of fuel needed to change an orbit, ALL IN MY HEAD. In english units, no way. Let me see, 12 inches in a foot, 5280 feet/mile, a cubic foot of water weighs ...........I dunno. However, a cubic meter of water is obviously 1000 Kg. One does need to remember a few basic constants such as c, q, mass of electron and proton, Avagodros number, etc. However, in english units you would not only have to remember such constants but also conversions between various units. Ummmmmm, how do you go from BTU/sec to hp? How is hp related to watts? Calculating pressure, you say nobody does this, WRONG. I used to be an oilfield engineer, the only way to deal with english units was to memorize bizzaro conversions such as: downhole pressure =.052*mudweight(pounds/gallon)*depth in feet. Somewhere in that .052 number is the constant g (what is g in english units, something like 32 ft/sec/sec) but this formula gives no physical sense of what is happening. In SI, one simply uses the formula Pressure =rho*g*h where rho(density) is in kg/m3 and g is about 10 m/sec2 and h is in meters. This formula in SI would be useful on the moon where g is 1/6 of that on earth whereas I have no immediate idea how to modify the english one (probably divide .052 by 6 I think just to keep units correct). Quite frankly, the cumbersome english units cause so much confusion that we would have far better of understanding of physical concepts if we simply used SI in everything (except temp where we would use Celsius).
From: Heidi Graw on 3 Feb 2010 00:04
>"Bart Goddard" <goddardbe(a)netscape.net> wrote in message >news:Xns9D13CCB0DF19Egoddardbenetscapenet(a)74.209.136.81... > "Heidi Graw" <hgraw(a)telus.net> wrote in > news:tC4an.64378$PH1.2203(a)edtnps82: > > >> He prefers the metric. It's easier to learn and easier to use. >> I also prefer metric for those same reasons. > > Which is also a reason for choosing Cosmetology school > over Engineering. > > B. <chuckle> ...and lots of folks do just that. A good question to ask is, "How do you get the most using the least amount of energy?" If cosmetology earns one an adequate living, and it requires less energy and effort, then why not? Haven't you noticed that those who earn the most conserve the most energy? Being an energy efficient person can be rather quite profitable. ;-) Heidi |