The metric system sucks
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From: Bart Goddard on 3 Feb 2010 07:55 "Heidi Graw" <hgraw(a)telus.net> wrote in news:Ut7an.64398$PH1.36602 @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? Most of my students are trying to learn Calculus or Differential Equations from me. They chose Engineering not because they know what it is (they don't) but because they think they can earn more money doing it. I always manage to work the statement into a lecture: Sure, you make twice as much as an engineer, but you have to work 3 times the hours. B. -- Cheerfully resisting change since 1959.
From: Joshua Cranmer on 3 Feb 2010 07:56 On 02/02/2010 11:53 PM, Andrew Usher wrote: > On Feb 2, 8:19 pm, Joshua Cranmer<Pidgeo...(a)verizon.invalid> wrote: >> 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. Maybe. But it is underlying evidence of an extreme Amerocentric tendency. >> 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. I'm not so optimistic. If NASA were to cooperate with other space industries, they would have had to match tools and technologies--which mean at least some departments would have become used to working in SI by themselves. >> 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. Woah. You're basically saying here "the U.S. uses Imperial units, so the rest of the world should too. Because the U.S. uses them." That is the kind of thinking that lands people in wars. It's also the kind of thinking that went of fashion a half-century ago when colonial empires imploded. >> The cost is in conversion, period. > > If that's so, then there's no reason to prefer metric. Standardization. High upfront cost = lower costs later. > 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. I'm counting what most people would use in everyday usage. How many people start comparing capacitor sizes? The units people are most used to in electricity are the watt (an SI unit) and kilowatt-hour. Even in the U.S. > 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. Actually, it was marketing departments. This disk has 10440 kilobytes (that is to say, 1,474,560 bytes), so obviously it has 1.44 MB of storage. Standards organizations, to my knowledge, generally don't bother with the prefixes, but rather use the numbers directly. >> 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? Why would people use that in everyday usage? You're arguing on esoteric levels, which, quite frankly, most people don't care about. I routinely refer to liquid volume in amounts up to the few gallons, occasionally barrels (oil...). Distance really doesn't come up outside of a thousand miles at most. Weights are generally capped with that of a large truck, much less in normal usage. So basically, I can boil down your argument into two main supports: 1. The US uses imperial units, and the US can impose its will on the other countries. The imperial are more "traditional", so everyone should go switch to imperial units rather than the more common (but more artificial) SI units. 2. People come up with crazy things for the SI system, like these prefixes of "yotta". To respond to 1: that is such an... imperialist, arch-Amerocentrist view that it would make me ashamed to even share the same nationality as you. To respond to 2: doesn't mean we have to use them. It's not like we use rods, chains, furlongs, hogsheads, hundredweights, grains, etc. on a daily basis, after all. Most people will stick the a small list of four or so prefixes to describe what is reasonable for everyday things. -- Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it. -- Donald E. Knuth
From: Bart Goddard on 3 Feb 2010 08:59 Joshua Cranmer <Pidgeot18(a)verizon.invalid> wrote in news:hkbrpu$e0j$1(a)news- int2.gatech.edu: > Woah. You're basically saying here "the U.S. uses Imperial units, so the > rest of the world should too. Yet isn't that the argument the other side gives as well? "We all use Metric, so the US should too, and by the way, if they don't, then they're just stoopid." B. -- Cheerfully resisting change since 1959.
From: Aatu Koskensilta on 3 Feb 2010 09:04 Andrew Usher <k_over_hbarc(a)yahoo.com> writes: > On Feb 2, 6:47�pm, "Heidi Graw" <hg...(a)telus.net> wrote: > >> Btw, my own husband prefers the metric system. > > And why should his opinion matter, if he hasn't looked at it from the > perspective I have? Should his opinion matter if he has looked at it from the perspective you have? Why? -- Aatu Koskensilta (aatu.koskensilta(a)uta.fi) "Wovon man nicht sprechan kann, dar�ber muss man schweigen" - Ludwig Wittgenstein, Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus
From: bert on 3 Feb 2010 09:21
On Feb 2, 11:59 pm, Frogwatch <dboh...(a)mindspring.com> wrote: > 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).- Hide quoted text - > > - Show quoted text - ToYa All Metric 10 USA system 0 We make pennies. cameras,lenses etc all using metric. I don't like stones for weight. Foot for length. I go with meters and grams TreBert |