It seems like a weird point to bring up. How often do y’all convert your measurements? It’s not even a daily thing. If I’m measuring something, I either do it in inches, or feet, rarely yards. I’ve never once had to convert feet into miles, and I can’t imagine I’m unique in this. When I have needed to, it’s usually converting down (I.e. 1/3 of a foot), which imperial does handle better in more cases.
Like. I don’t care if we switch, I do mostly use metric personally, it just seems like a weird point to be the most common pro-metric argument when it’s also the one I’m least convinced by due to how metric is based off of base 10 numbering, which has so many problems with it.
Edit: After reading/responding a lot in the comments, it does seem like there’s a fundamental difference in how distance is viewed in metric/imperial countries. I can’t quite put my finger on how, but it seems the difference is bigger than 1 mile = 1.6km
I’m honestly surprised you’ve never had to do that, because it happens to me all the time.
Like when I’m approaching a junction on the road and the satnav suddenly changes from saying 0.5 miles to like 500 yards, that’s jarring and breaks my mental countdown. (In Britain, the roads are imperial, yes it’s a pain.)
Or if I’m cooking an old recipe and it needs 12oz of something, but I’m doubling the quantity, suddenly I need to know what that is in lb and oz because my scale doesn’t just tell me 24oz.
Or if someone says they’re 5’ 8" tall, I have to know how many " in a ’ to conceptualise how close that is to 6’.
Meanwhile, I know when I’m out hiking what my pacing is for 100m, and if I’ve got 2.5km to go, that’s 25 lots of pacing.
Or when I’m sewing, and fabric is sold by the metre but all the pattern pieces are measured in cm or mm.
And not strictly related, but it’s handy being able to measure out water in an unmarked container using a weighing scale and the fact that 1l=1kg.
I think part of it is being used to it (I do just kiiiinda know that 5’8" is 4" shy of 6’, but I blame the same nerdiness that lead me to knowing what links, chains, and furlongs even are for that one), and the other part is I use metric in the kitchen, and don’t follow recipes directly a lot of the time. I have some master recipes memorized that get used.
My GPS doesn’t do a 500ft callout (kinda wish it did), it’s usually 200, which my brain translates “Slow down now or you will miss the turn” because the announcement is often a little behind, so it’s jarring for other reasons. Also your GPS says yards?? Mine only does feet/miles, and mine’s weird and verbally calls out “Five tenths of a mile” when I’m walking to the store.
Yes, the UK uses yards as an intermediate unit between feet and miles, and it’s displayed on signs.
Oh, wild. My GPS (I’m in the US) just goes from 1/8 mile to 100 feet. It’s kinda rare to hear people talk in yards unless it’s a vague “A few yards over”, or when it’s 1/32~1/16 miles if they need to be accurate here. Anything nearer is feet, anything farther is in eighths, quarters, or half miles.
Recently I was wondering how much my pool weights when its filled with water and I could easily calculate it in my head: 4m x 2m x 1m=8m³ -> 8000dm³ -> 8000l -> 8000kg or 8t
To me, that’s the biggest point, in metric, the units are made to fit together quite nicely
Because we are used to it and doing extra mental acrobatics for any conversions seems unnecessary.
You use money right? $1 = 100 cent, thousand is 1000 dollars or 100 000 cents. Imagine if somebody suddenly tried to tell you their money is just as easy to use when in their system $1 = 187 cents and thousand means 987 dollars, or by conversion 184 569 cents. Would you not see that as ridicilulous?
No, actually, I heard about the Brits decimalizing their currency, and thought it was an unfortunate choice. It was 20 shillings to a pound, 12 pence to a shilling, and I do actually, genuinely, unironicqlly think having 240 cents to a dollar is better than 100. 144 would be better, but 240 is still better than 100 imo
You sure? Ok, you check your pocket and see that you have 5 half-pennies, 2 sixpence, 10 shillings, a crown, two florins, 3 half-crowns, and 3 pounds. Quickly, tell me, can you buy a 2 pound 15 shilling sandwich and a 1 pound 10 shillings drink? Which coins do you use for that?
Unless I’m missing a coin somewhere, no, you’d only have 3 pounds, 19 shillings, 2.5 pence.
Now, quickly, you have six dimes, a roll of quarters, seventeen pennies, and two rolls of nickels. Can you afford a $20 meal?
Quickly: No, a roll of quarters is $10. A roll of nickels won’t get you there.
Screw this, I’m going to quit counting and track down the joker who dumped all this coinage on me and box his ears with the nickel rolls.
No idea because I don’t know how much a dime, or a nickel is worth, nor what you define as a roll. I can guess a quarter is 25¢. None of those are a decimalized values though, and you’re giving nicknames to certain coins because you’re still holding to a non decimalized money system, it only makes the system more difficult to you.
A quick Google search let me know that a dime is 10¢, a roll contains 40 coins, a quarter is indeed 25¢, a penny is 1¢ and a nickel is 5¢. And first of all it becomes obvious you need to put large numbers to make the decimalized system appear difficult, I purposefully used small amounts of coins someone might have in their pockets, a total of 23 coins, with no coin having more than their next denomination in value, your example however needed over 130 coins, random nicknames for values and coins grouped in random amounts to try to introduce difficulty.
So the short answer is that if someone pulls out over 130 coins to pay for their meal they will be told to use a machine to count them. But because decimalization actually makes your life easier, a “roll of quarters” is worth 10, a “roll of nickels” is worth 2, and the rest is 77¢, so nope, even with your arbitrary exaggerated amounts and nicknames it’s still easy to count it to 14.77. Had I told you five scores of Bob, 3 Baker’s dozen Joeys, two threescore Florin, 17 crowns, and 3 ten bob rolls you would still be adding stuff into next week. Math is just easier with decimal currency because we use a decimal numbering system, €5/10 = 0.5€, but £5/10=10s or 120p
These aren’t nicknames, these are the standard names of US currency. Pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and half-dollars (not super common though)
Also if someone pulled out 26 coins to pay for a meal they’d also have a very annoyed cashier at minimum
The point of this was more “Coins are a pain in the ass regardless of whether we’re dealing with 100 or 240 as the base”
These aren’t nicknames, these are the standard names of US currency. Pennies, nickels, dimes, quarters, and half-dollars (not super common though)
They’re nicknames for those (Similar to how people refer to bills by whatever president is printed on it), they might be very popular nicknames which grants them the “common name” descriptor, but the official names are the boring “<amount> cents coin”. People outside of your country have no obligation to know how you nickname your coins.
Also if someone pulled out 26 coins to pay for a meal they’d also have a very annoyed cashier at minimum
Well, that might be true now because most counties only have 5 different coins, but pre-decinalized currency in the UK had 11 coins, it only got to 26 coins in my example because I included 7 of those (Sorry for farthing, pennies and Guinea fans out there), most of which in small numbers that someone might be carrying around in their pocket individually. And my point was precisely that, it’s such a complex system that you end up with dozens of coins with random values trying to mix and match them to get to the amount you want.
The point of this was more “Coins are a pain in the ass regardless of whether we’re dealing with 100 or 240 as the base”
But they’re not, like you realized with 26 coins of 7 different values you didn’t even get to a whole pound, with a decimal system the closest you can get is 1 50¢, 1 25¢, 1 10¢, 2 5¢, 4 1¢ which is 9 coins, and like you can see the vast majority is a single coin because 2 of them would get you to the next coin already.
144 would be better,
Gross
I’m very much an advocate for base 12, which would have 100 be 144 (12^2, same way 100 is 10^2)
That would make more sense if we also counted in base 12 in general, which we don’t.
Okay so lets use your numbers and buy s sanwitch and a drink from deli. Lets say the bread is $4,50 and the drink is $2,60.
So by conversion sanwich is $4 and ¢72 and the drink is $2 and ¢86 (86,4 is the accurate, but lets just round it)
So the total is $6 and ¢158. Then we need to convert it to the wholes and its $7 and ¢14.
In base hundred system the last conversion is just easier because you can do it just by moving a decimal. And i dont see any benefit in a system that makes that harder. And that is the reason why i think units like miles and feet are worse than metric.
Yes, in base 10 it does make the conversions easier, and we do use base 10. I don’t think we should, but we do, but also the money conversion is something that is a relatively daily occurrence, not something that doesn’t frequently happen like most distance conversions. While, yes, being 5 foot 8 inches is how we usually say people’s heights, we do regularly just… Not convert. TVs are sold as 55 inch, not as 1 yard, 1 foot, and 7 inches, same as the average female height isn’t 1 meter, 6 decimeters, 7 centimeters, and 5 millimeters in the US. It’s 167.5cm.
You asked why people bring conversions up when talking about metric system and i tried to explain it. When you are used to a system where you can do it, its jarring when people try to say system where it is impossible is better.
Both systems work in everyday use just as well, but one system is superior in those situations where you need to calculate something little different from the norm.
Personal example from last year was when person who owns a road with me and few others wanted to make it wider for heavy machinery (he is fellling lot of trees and he will get better price if the trucks collecting the logs can drive closer). It was really easy for me to calculate how many m² i would loose field and forest area when the road is widened because even if the amount road is widened is in cm and the lenght of the road is in km those numbers mix well. I could easily calculate everything accurately, while in feet and miles i think i would just had to questimate it.
You wouldn’t believe how often I have to convert measurements because one big backwards country still clings to nonsensical imperial units.
And it’s not only length, it’s even worse in the kitchen where they seem to measure about everything in cups. Like “add one cup of spinach”.
I keep my own recipe binder and put everything in grams but I still use cups or quarts for liquid when it’s like half a cup or more instead of milliliters and liters mostly because it’s more intuitive for me to estimate accurately, likely due to indoctrination. I also use teaspoons and fractions of that, sometimes tablespoons but usually by weight at that amount. I use teaspoons and the fractions because my scale is fairly useless at that small of an amount, especially when I’m combining multiple seasonings into a dish to use while I’m cooking.
Anyway, yeah it takes me some time to create the recipe but I self host mealie and work from home so I’ll just work on them when I have some downtime. But yeah, recipes used to really annoy the shit out of me. I enjoy cooking so much more now that I have my own recipes, I think later this year/next year I’m going to see if I can get a custom book printed that I can give to my kids and loved ones as a Christmas gift.
I used it a few times with measurements around the house but sure, it’s not a daily occurrence.
What most annoys me about imperial are the recipes. Why the fuck do you not weigh your ingredients? Instead you have to put everything in these measuring cups, shake it or even press it in so it sits flat. How many carrots is 1 cup of diced carrots? With experience you will know but if it said grams, you could weigh the whole thing in the store and be done with it. It doesn’t need to be very precise with cooking but you get the idea.
But don’t get me started on baking recipes…
Cups were invented by the pioneers. It’s easier to carry a cup around than to carry scales and a whole bunch of weights around. There is little no reason to still use cups.
TIL.
Crafty buggers
The crazy thing is that for some recipes it doesn’t even matter the exact amount, but for others it does.
When I was taking chemistry, we had specific instructions to indicate that it didn’t matter exactly how much of something you used, verse when it did matter.
I think a lot of that is tradition, since imperial almost certainly predates scales being an everyday item. Annoys the shit out of me, too, though, so I use metric in the kitchen, because I have a scale xD It does depend on the recipe, though. For pancakes I just use a jug, put the egg/butter/salt/etc in, then fill up to the 2 cup mark, then add in half cups of flour until it looks right, but at that point it’s not really measuring anything beyond the total liquid content. Easy recipe, though, and good pancakes.
I put this as part of a response to another user. But since it also answers the main question of this post I’ll repeat it here:
Because it’s not only better for me, but it’s also better for you.
It doesn’t matter if I tell you a distance in meters or kilometers, you only have to remember what that means in feet so you can convert it to whatever imperial distance you want. Just multiply/divide by 1000 afterwards by moving the decimal point. If 53 meters is 863 yards, 53 kilometers is 863000 yards.
However, it does matter what unit you choose to communicate with me. I know that 1 inch is about 25.4mm/2.5cm, but if I’m unlucky and you decide to say it in feet, I’m going to need to Google the conversion.
I don’t care what units you used for yourself, as you shouldn’t care what units I use for myself. However, if we have to communicate, we should both be as helpful as we can so we can communicate as easily and effectively as possible. Communicating with someone using imperial is a pain in the ass, while communicating with someone using metric is as easy as it gets. The only thing easier than metric is scientific notation, since with that you don’t even need to remember what the metric prefixes mean. However scientific notation is only easily written, not spoken. Speaking in scientific notation is a pain in the ass.
I do know the conversions, at least roughly enough to get the point. I will, however, point out that this same argument applies both directions. That usually results in a pidgin when it comes to language, which would be quite funny, but not very practical in this case.
Communicating with someone in metric if you already know metric is easy. The process of pulling up a calculator is the same regardless which direction you’re going from, since converting 55" to 1.375m isn’t something that most people are gonna be able to do in their heads
That is in fact incorrect. And the reason is in that other comment. To make a summary of that other comment:
If an only-metric guy wanted to communicate with an only-imperial one, each would need a table of conversions. For a basic use case, the metric cheat sheet would only need 8 entries, while the imperial one 10. That is, you need to memorize less "magic number"s for metric than for imperial. Furthermore, 5 of those entries in the metric cheat sheet are: 1000, 1000, 1/10, 1/100, 1/1000, which are obviously easy. So the real difference would be more like 3 entries to 10.
Of course, any kind of real measurement you will need a calculator. But that is reality for any unit conversion across systems. The difference is that you only need to remember 3 numbers to convert to/from metric, but you need 10 to convert to/from imperial.
You’ve never had to add measurements with mixed units?
Ie. 1lb 2oz + 4lb 15oz?
Or heights, 5ft 10in + 6ft 5in?
Rarely outside of a school setting
There are plenty of people though who do these kinds of calculations daily. Like engineers and scientists.
There are! Most people are not engineers, or scientists, and rarely encounter these types of situations. Also from an admittedly cursory search, it seems to be that most professionals use metric for most jobs, anyway, or a mix that causes problems.
Per the search, it seems like a lot of engineers use metric, except for government jobs, which require imperial, and sometimes specific clients demand imperial instead of metric.
Pharmacist friend uses mostly metric at work, except for creams, which come labeled in metric but measured in imperial (1 ounce but labeled as 28.5g), but they’ll sometimes come as a rounder 28 or 30g which causes the problems. There’s also one med that’s measured in grains (~64mg, not a commonly used measurement in most settinfs) for some very strange reasons.
So now you just admitted that metric is better at least for some use cases and then the conversion to imperial causes problems. So wouldn’t it be better if everyone was just using metric? Or what is the advantage of imperial?
Admittedly I do like how imperial feels on a personal scale. Like I said in the OP, I’m not anti-metric, and in a few other replies I’ve said I’m definitely more pro-switching than anti. It’s just the conversion argument always seemed like a weird one to me, given how infrequently conversions happen here. Seems like y’all do just convert more often than we do.
I daily switch from cm to meters
Besides the popularity, decimal conversions are the only factor, really. Otherwise they’re both arbitrary.
it does seem like there’s a fundamental difference in how distance is viewed in metric/imperial countries
I’d like to point out that it’s literally just Liberia, Myanmar and the US. I have no idea what the difference could be, since it’s a concept that predates any system of measure and is biologically hardwired into us.
I’d like to point out that it’s literally just Liberia, Myanmar and the US.
As other people have pointed out, the UK, and Canada also use Imperial, just not officially, and it’s in a lot of different contexts. Canada had 6’ signs in most shops at the start of COVID, while government buildings all had 2 meters, as an example.
I have no idea what the difference could be, since it’s a concept that predates any system of measure and is biologically hardwired into us.
Not totally sure, either, but it does seem like there is one. There’s the funny haha one of Americans thinking driving 200 miles (~300km) is a day trip, but that’s not what it’s been feeling like. Can’t quite put my finger on it, but it’s like the whole thing where once you learn what eggshell looks like in comparison to off-white you will always see the difference, where before you really didn’t.
Canada uses imperial in certain contexts unofficially. Feet and inches for a person’s height, or a cut of wood. You won’t see miles or gallons anywhere, though. The UK is even weirder - they use “stone” for a person’s weight, which is a customary unit in no complete system of measurements.
From the wikipedia article:
The plural stone is often used when providing a weight (e.g. “this sack weighs 8 stone”).[34] A person’s weight is usually quoted in stone and pounds in English-speaking countries that use the avoirdupois system, with the exception of the United States and Canada, where it is usually quoted in pounds.
Which I checked for fun. I love how they say that like therr are more than 4 countries fitting that description. 2 of them use stone, 2 don’t, at least I think. Can’t find anything official on whether Liberia uses it or not, but I’ve heard UK people say it.
Just the fact that they say it like it’s not a 50/50 split xD
I use metric for distance. It’s more functional and easier to use.
Meter. Cm. Mm. (But not km that much.)
How often do y’all convert your measurements?
It’s second nature in metric. All the time.
Judging by your post, it sounds like that’s not the case in imperial. But you need to understand that especially converting between mm, cm, m, and km, for example, is not just extremely common, it’s just normal. If you add up 10 times a 1000 meters, you don’t call that 10000 meters, that would be awkward. You say it’s 10 km.
We convert all the time, so that’s why we assume the same must be the case in imperial and thus the easy conversions must be focused on because clearly they would get you to understand why metric is superior.
Tl;dr: I think the different imperial units represent a shift of scale that just doesn’t happen in day to day life, given how different most of the common ones are.
Yeah, we largely… Don’t? We’re much more likely to 10x10 feet is 100 feet instead of 33 yard+1 foot. Even if we do go with something that ends on 99 feet I don’t know anyone who would convert that to yards, even the GPS just says “In 200 feet turn right.”
Anything above about 600 feet gets talked about in fractions of a mile. 1/8, 1/4, 1/2, etc, but if we’re talking feet and go into that most would just stick with feet. 200+460 feet is 660 feet, not an eight of a mile, despite being an eighth of a mile.
If we’re talking the “equivalent” to 10x1000 meters, we’d start talking about miles, not feet/yards xD I think it’s because going from one unit to the other represents a shift in scale that just doesn’t get run into frequently in day to day life? Because a yard is about a meter, 1 meter is about 7.5cm shorter, which is negligible for this discussion. A mile is 1,760 of those. I know that conversion because I’m a nerd, I doubt most people do, because it’s not common enough in day to day life to need it. Land surveyors might, I’d assume they’re more likely to know a lot of weirder ones, like feet to chains (66 feet), and maybe furlongs (10 chains) over the direct yard/miles conversion, since chains/furlongs were made for that profession, but I’m not, and don’t know a surveyor so I can’t say for sure.
I just don’t believe you at all.
There are 12 inches in a foot. So the scale of a foot is 12x that of an inch.
There are 100cm in 1m. That is 100x.
Europeans convert cm to m very frequently, and it’s a scale shift 10x larger than the one of inch-foot.
We also convert km to m frequently, which is a 1000x scale shift. It’s more than half that of yard-mile.
The reason you don’t convert often is because it is a pain in the ass to do so. Not the other way around.
The reason you say “an eight of a foot” has meaning, while “0.125 feet” does not. However, saying “125 meters” is way easier for both the listener and the talker than “an eighth of a kilometer”. If it weren’t, we’d say 1/8km, since nothing in metric prevents you from doing that.
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A: I don’t know what point you are trying to make. Could you clarify? To clarify on my part, nobody would say what you said. We would probably choose one of the following options:
- 1.675m
- 1m 67.5cm
- 167.5cm
Of course options 1 and 2 sound basically the same when spoken. And we wouldn’t measure a human height to mm precision, so 1.68m, 1m 68cm, and 168cm.
B: ad hominem.
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I haven’t really been trying to convince people to switch, but I have been telling people I’ve switched to metric for at least temperature (so far).
And that’s less to conversation about how it’s just objectively better than fahrenheit in literally every single way, except familiarity. Which given that any switch in life would have that problem, I see that as a non-issue.
Scales should never be based on arbitrary things, or creatively-decided things. They should have a concrete, absolute, and objective thing they’re based on, and keeping it based on a certain number for scales of units is better than 12in to a foot, 3 feet to a yard, etc.
It doesn’t necessarily have to be base 10, but given that’s what it society uses, that’s probably best for us, but any base will do, as long as it’s consistent.
I’m fairly certain the only reason we don’t know the things Fahrenheit was based on is because he didn’t write it down.
While Celsius is based on something real (the freezing, and boiling points of distilled water at sea level), it’s not something that someone can measure at most locations? Fahrenheit has the same issue, mind you, the only calibration point it had that’s always measurable is the average body temperature, which is also inconsistent, as anyone who’s tried getting pregnant will know.
At the end of the day anything we base a temperature scale on could be considered arbitrary, though modern Fahrenheit is also based on freezing/boiling water, we just put the points at 32 and 212 (180 degrees between) instead of 0 and 100 (100 degrees between). AFAIK the reason the freezing point is at 32 was because the original 0 point was based on the freezing point of a brine solution? Either way, point is now they’re both based on the same thing: When a specific uncontaminated liquid changes phases at on specific parts of the planet that don’t exist in a lot of countries
While true picking anything is arbitrary, picking something that’s reliably constant on this planet is definitely less so than old measurements of the length of some king’s arm length or whatever that cannot be intuitive to anyone at all (unless their arm happens to be the same I guess, but that’s very inconsistent at best).
Maybe I was too vague, but picking something that can be derived consistently is ordered of magnitude less arbitrary than whatever literally everything in the imperial system is.
As for fahrenheit’s original 0° being an “oopsie”, clearly the high end is very clearly still not based on boiling. The scale isn’t based on something if the number that thing happens at is 212°. Even 200 is just ugly.
The scale should’ve been redone once that got sorted out, ancient communications standards be damned. Even just forgiving that, it should’ve been tossed out in favor of a cleaner method immediately. Keeping that filth is just unconscionable.
If scales shouldn’t be arbitrary then a temperature measurement system that picked the state change of fresh water at atmosphereic pressure where you find a bunch of salt water which has a different state change temperature, might be just slightly arbitrary. Kelvin trys to fix it by moving the zero to eliminate negatives, but doesn’t change the scale making all the other temperatures arbitrary.
Metric is great, as long as humans are living on Earth. Any other planet or a major change to the atmosphere or Sea level and everyone is going to be why did they pick such random points. Luckily nothing is happening to change the atmosphere or Sea level on Earth so nothing to worry about.
I actually do conversions on the regular but than again I live in Europe so I use the metric system and all conversions are base 10 so it is super easy. Take distance for example:
- 0.5 km
- 500 m
- 50 000 cm
- 500 000 mm Etc…
I see where you are coming from and I agree that the big advantage of the metric system is not specifically conversion or anything in particular, but in general that everything fits together due to the coherent units and ratio.
How often do y’all convert your measurements? It’s not even a daily thing.
It’s not literally an active daily task, but the effortless conversion benefits your mental image of measurements in general and you don’t even have to think about the conversion in the first place. I do not think you are unique in this though. When you live in a place that uses the imperial system (sorry for assuming. Correct me, if I’m wrong), your personal benefit of using the metric system is limited in your daily life.
but in general that everything fits together due to the coherent units and ratio
Isn’t what you call coherent units and ratio just another word for conversions?
How do you differentiate them then?
The best arguments for metric is that you get to travel slightly faster for an equivalent speed limit (100 kph > 60 mph) and only needing to own one set of wrenches
I own one wrench, and it’s adjustable :P
My own heathenism aside, that speed limit would likely end up being 65; speed limits that end in 0 are kinda rare here? It’s usually 25, 35, 45, etc unless it’s a speed trap. It’s something I noticed a while ago, and can’t quite figure out why, so it’s stuck with me. Might actually have to look into that at some point.
