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Comment by barney54 | Hacker News Reader

I used to think the US would go metric, but more recently I'm not sure. The biggest question is what is the advantage for every day purposes? For example, a foot is a more useful measurement than the meter. Fahrenheit is more useful than Celsius (I know Celisus is not technically metric). Pounds are more useful than kilos (a best it's a wash). I don't see why grams beat ounces.

I just don't see the value of metric for everyday purposes. For science, yes, but not for everyday measurement.

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You're saying that foot is more useful than meter and so on but you don't explain why. As an European who has always used the metric system and never encountered the customary system, I am perfectly fine with the metric system.

For instance, I am puzzled by the affirmation about Fahrenheit. Cooking very often uses water and Celsius having a scale based on that. I'm not sure that having a scale with the highest temperature based on the temperature of horse blood is much more relevant in every day life...

And so on for the other measurements...

Usefulness is not a relevant question for measurements, because we can always find real life objects to make these more visible (for instance, one long step is for me about 1 meter).

> You're saying that foot is more useful than meter and so on but you don't explain why.

To divide a foot, you can divide by 12, 6, 3, 4, or 2 and get round numbers in inches. Round numbers can be easier to deal with than fractions or decimals.

Another non-american here. That doesn't help much.

How often do you try to describe something a sixth of the length of your foot? I'm trying to think of an example where it matters either way, but the only thing I can come up with is that there is only one measurement in metric distance: the meter. A centimeter is a hundredth of that, a milli- is a thousandth. In the American system I have to know the relation between inches, feet, miles and probably more (isn't yard also part of it? I don't even know).

> How often do you try to describe something a sixth of the length of your foot?

It happens all the time. There's a very popular piece of wood known as a 'two by four' which is 2 inches by 4 inches.

I think part of the deal with (and joy of) joining the world of metric is that you stop buying and selling 2x4's.

And if this were metric, it would be a 5 by 10.

(If you can't figure out what fraction of a metre this is, let me know, and I'll try to help you out.)

Except that a "2x4" is typically 1½ × 3½ . Quoting https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lumber#North_American_softwood... :

> a "2x4" board historically started out as a green, rough board actually 2 by 4 inches (51 mm × 102 mm). After drying and planing, it would be smaller, by a nonstandard amount. Today, a "2x4" board starts out as something smaller than 2 inches by 4 inches and not specified by standards, and after drying and planing is reliably 1½ by 3½ inches (38 mm × 89 mm).

2 inches is a very useful measure for a lot of things. I know that the middle digit on my little finger is an inch, and my foot is actually a foot long. I have no idea what 5mm looks like unless I convert it.

Also, don't forget that wonderful measure of area, the acre. I have no idea how big a hectare is, only that it's less than an acre. And there are 640 acres to a square mile, which is convenient if you grew up in farm country where there is a road pretty much every mile.

I won't bore you with gallons, chains, rods, furlongs, or hundredweights (American or Imperial).

2 inches is 5 cm, very practical too. My thumb is 1 cm wide, the span of my thumb and index is 15 cm. I can add all this up and end upbwith 137 cm, which is a meter and 37 centimeters. Never had to convert anything.

And yet there are 3 feet to a yard, 16 ounces to a pound, 32 fluid ounces to a quart, and so on. Yes it would be lovely if our number system were base 12 but it isn't that's not going to change any time soon. Realistically we need to work with the number system we've got, and at the very least be consistent.e

And three teaspoons in a tablespoon. No wait, dammit, it's four teaspoons, or is it ½ a fluid ounce? But is that a US fluid ounce, an imperial fluid ounce, or whatever they use for US food labelling that's different again? What part of the world was this recipe written in?

Meanwhile one litre equals one litre (regional spelling variations notwithstanding).

Again this is a 'I'm personally used to this, so it must make sense to everyone' category of claim.

Here in AU we use metric widely. There are some older generation types that drop to imperial measurements for some things, particularly when talking about human height.

A foot is about 30cm (or 300mm) - so if you're talking about working in 1/12, 1/6, 1/3, 1/4, or 1/2 of something around that size, it's not something that blocks us for very long: the calculating of fractions of 30 (or 300) units.

Typically I work with metres (and subsets of) - 1000mm - which your 1/4 and 1/2 are, obviously, easy to apply and still get this enviable 'round number' that you speak of. 1/3 of a metre is 333mm (or close enough to) and it's rare that my pencil is sharp enough (or my care high enough) to denote a third of a millimetre. Similarly 1/6th (I don't recall ever needing to divide a length of anything into 1/6ths - perhaps I'm atypical).

I think the most compelling evidence against any claim that 'it's easier to work in base 12' (or similar) is that our machines, our houses, our infrastructure ... don't all fail to fit together, or fall apart, because their components were measured in metric.

When I say 'our' I mean the 95% of the world's population that isn't the USA.

Why would someone bother to speak these languages instead of standardizing on eg English or Spanish:

Albanian, Armenian, Belarusian, Bosnian, Bulgarian, Catalan, Croatian, Czech, Danish, Dutch, Finnish, French, Estonian, Georgian, German, Greek, Hungarian, Icelandic, Irish, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Macedonian, Norwegian, Polish, Portuguese, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovene, Swedish, Turkish, Ukrainian

It makes absolutely no sense and is a large economic detriment. It leads to dramatic inefficiencies in communication and attempts to form common markets. Yet nobody dares to seriously confront ending the wildly inefficient system of using dozens of languages across Europe. Every excuse in the book is made as to why dozens of languages should be taught and maintained, it still rationally makes no sense. The point is, people do things out of custom, out of comfort, out of laziness, for all sorts of reasons that are not logical.

Mori Arinori, the first Japanese ambassador to the United States (and later, Minister of Education), proposed abolishing the Japanese language in favor of English.

I don't think it is similar.

These languages have evolved during centuries and continue to evolve, whereas the metric system was built purposefully for simplicity. The equivalent of the metric system would be something like Esperanto. English is as archaic and complicated as the customary system for measurement.

As someone raised metric I never understood how one unit was more "useful" than the other. The fact of the matter is that you can calculate and reason with metric which is tricky in imperial units. Celsius also makes more sense to me as someone living in the alps ;)

I recently moved from a Fahrenheit-using country to one where the weather is typically given in Celsius.

The Fahrenheit temperatures map onto reasonably discrete "comfort ranges" for me. If it's going to be in the 50s, I might want a light jacket. I don't need one if it's in the 60s, and probably want short sleeves in the 70s (definitely in the 80s).

In contrast, if it's going to be in the "teens" in Celcius, the weather might require anything from a jacket to short sleeves.

Might have something to do with your moving from one to the other. Living in the Netherlands I know perfectly well what to wear when it's 11 or 18 degrees. To me it sounds like you're saying dollars are hard to use since you were used to yen. With dollars everything is 100 times closer together.

> if it's going to be in the "teens" in Celcius

So don't think like that. Consider five degree increments instead. After a little bit of experience it's quite simple.

Obviously, this is not one of the insoluble problems in my life (and the weather has been completely bonkers this year anyway) :-)

Yes... and so when it's going to be in the "teens" in centigrade, they tell you how many damn degrees they think it's going to be, rather than dicking you about by giving you a needlessly large range.

I bet the weather forecasters in America never tell you the temperature is going to be "positive, and in 2 digits".

Whatever next? Difficulty knowing how far away things are because miles are so large compared to km?

They don't do that in the US.

On the other hand, in Canada, they do say "temperatures will be in the teens this morning" all the time on the radio without elaborating further.

But...since you brought it up, I also find it's much easier to get in the appropriate lane when the exits (etc) are indicated one mile in advance (~1 minute driving time) than 1 km (~30 seconds). 2km warning would be fine too, but since it's not a round number, they tend not to be signed that way....

While I agree that it probably matters most whatever you were brought up with, Fahrenheit is a smaller unit of measure, and, as a result, more precise. Metric is more logical in every other case I can think of, but most people in the US can think in 'standard' measurements. It's really cultural, for the most part.

  > While I agree that it probably matters most whatever you
  > were brought up with, Fahrenheit is a smaller unit of measure,
  > and, as a result, more precise.

Personally I've never needed or cared to know the outside temperature finer than a Celsius degree.

If you ever did have a need for something 'more precise', please remember:

https://www.mathsisfun.com/definitions/decimal-point.html

Fahrenheit does have smaller units, but nobody uses them. When was the last time you heard somebody distinguish between 72 and 73 degrees Fahrenheit? People use "low 70s", "mid 70s", "high 70s". With that in mind, I would say that the size of a single degree in Fahrenheit is too small of a unit.

> Fahrenheit is a smaller unit of measure, and, as a result, more precise

This one always comes up and it's the worst argument to me. Just going from the shade, or out from cover of wind and you'll get more than a degrees temperature difference. What use is that extra precision in daily use? And in any field that actually needs the extra precision (science, engineering), you're not going to shy away from using decimals.

I guess it mostly depends on how you grew up. Coming from the metric system I prefer it a lot because it's much more consistent and easier to convert between units (e.g. mg->g->kg). Even after moving to California I'm still confused by the variety of different units. For example if you look at recipes there are cups, ounces, pounds, teaspoons and none of them is easy to convert.

In Switzerland I used to fly glider planes. Unlike motored airplanes glider planes use the metric system. So heights are measured in meters and speed in km/h. It helps a lot to calculate how far or fast the plane will go compared to feet and miles.

The huge advantage of the metric system is not in its different choice of 1 unit of length, 1 unit of mass, etc. but in the relationships between all units. This is very useful to everyone, even to non-scientists. Illustration: https://i.imgur.com/iDOzAa5.jpg

Actually, unit conversion being complicated, makes a lot of problems complicated to calculate and so makes science appear difficult which only makes people not want to do science.

Using the American customary system of measurements is like using Roman numerals - everything is possible, but harder, so science and engineering progress slower.

> Using the American customary system of measurements is like using Roman numerals - everything is possible, but harder

And there's the money quote.

That depends entirely on your use case. If your use is easy division that may include denominators of multiples of 3, or 4, then the imperial measurements might be more useful. If your use case is being able to easily scale numbers and keep a handle in your mind of how they relate, then metric is more useful.

How many miles is 154,631 feet? How many kilometers is 724,642 meters?

How many inches in one sixth of a foot? How many centimeters in one sixth of a meter? (in case you don't think there's much gain in the imperial unit, try using 16 and 2/3 centimeters in your calculations,and it quickly becomes more cumbersome)

As someone that has used both systems, I have to say metric is much easier to use and more precise.

Typical daily usage includes cooking, ex "if I need 60g of sugar for 2l of water, how much sugar for half a liter?" Is really easy (60/4=15g), versus "if I need 2oz for 1 quart of water, how much sugar for 8floz?" Is annoying and frankly rather ridiculous: first you have to know that 1qrt=32floz (metric is of course always multiples of 10), then you get a result ½ ounce, that you can't convert to anything else and you're now dealing with fractions...

> I just don't see the value of metric for everyday purposes.

But this is only because you have learned it first.

Here we have learned just metric units and we don't see the value of imperial for everyday purposes

Still don't really get the Celsius thing, perhaps because I just grew up with it. It seems to make sense to me just fine.

<0C = cold, 10C = cool, 20C = warm, >30C = hot.

>I just don't see the value of metric for everyday purposes.

There is a value in saving lives by adopting a universal standard. I remember watching an air crash investigation episode about this confusion causing a fatal crash

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gimli_Glider

I see I have been downvoted a few times. What's your argument? Where do you disagree? I'd like to hear an alternative viewpoint.

I didn't downvote, but just curious: why do you say pounds are more useful than kilos?

I'm guessing it's because you didn't back up your arguments. Why is a foot more useful than a meter? Why is Fahrenheit is more useful than Celsius? Why are pounds more useful than kilos?

So let me kick it back to you: What's your argument?

Metric and imperial are both pretty arbitrary; one strong argument for metric is just to get an international standard.

> one strong argument for metric is just to get an international standard.

And that they are easy to convert among each other (simply powers of 10). And that there is a complete system of units (SI) that is based on it (what is the imperial unit of force, power, voltage, current,...? etc.).

> what is the imperial unit of force

The little-known "pound". :p

The Stormtrooper, obviously

> For example, a foot is a more useful measurement than the meter.

Why? 1m is about the length of one step (heel to heel)

> Fahrenheit is more useful than Celsius

Why? Freezing water has 0°C, boiling water 100°C.

> Pounds are more useful than kilos

By a numeric coincidence (gravity of earth is nearly 10 m/s^2) 1 kg has a weight of about 10 N. This makes it really easy when going climbing to compute what mass you can put on some part of the safety chain.

Generally: It is a pain in the ass to convert these non-metric units among one another. For one example 1 P̸ = 12p, 1 in = 6 P̸, 1 ft=12 in, 1 yd = 3ft, 1 mi = 1760 yd. Sounds very simple and logical to me. :-(

Alone this fact is for me argument enough for metric units.

Do you actually need to convert units a lot in your daily life? Or compare things to the freezing/boiling point of water?

For me, the major advantage of the imperial units is that they're all approximately human-scale. My foot is about a foot, my stride is about a yard, and it's surprising if I encounter weather outside 0-100F. A pint is a big drink; a cup is small one.

I'm a scientist, and all this goes out the window in the lab, of course. Even there though, a lot of the useful conversions do need some arbitrary constant (e.g. density, molarity) and the SI prefixes are not incredibly useful. I've literally never heard anyone measure something in deci/decameters. In practice, we tend to pick a unit that's approximately the right size and and stick with it--tiny things might be between 0.05µm and 2,500 µm, for example.

I wholeheartedly agree. I'm an expat, and it bothers me to no end when I encounter thermostats which can only be adjusted in whole degrees Celsius - I end up being either too cold or too hot.

Given its origins in Revolutionary France, the metric system is quite literally a communist plot.

So you're saying you can feel the difference between 20 and 21 degree Celsius?

> Given its origins in Revolutionary France, the metric system is quite literally a communist plot.

That must be a joke

To ease calculations scientists tend to work around 10^(3*n) kind of numbers. This is why you seldom see hecto- or deca- units, rather than kilo, mega, milli, micro, nano, etc.

"I just don't see the value of metric for everyday purposes. For science, yes, but not for everyday measurement."

Two systems of measurement for essentially the exact same things just complicates matters. Suggesting that your system is better (I'm (perhaps wrongly) assuming that it's because you learned one first) and more 'instinctive' or 'natural' is pretty poor argument.

Are there any truly objective reasons you can argue one system (in your case, imperial/customary) is actually better?

Yes, some units have slightly nicer divisible quantities, but that's easily outweighed by the crazy inconsistencies between different units of a type (stones, pounds and ounces, for example).

Or inches, feet, yards & miles. There's no obvious relation whatsoever, and while there maybe be historical justifications for their values, they're not exactly arithmetically convenient.

Or the horrible mess that happens when you get into fractional quantities. How much is 17/32" + 1/4"? Sure, I can work it out, but just adding some decimals together is a darn sight easier[1]. That can be done in either system, but imperial/customary definitely seems to favour it IME.

Ultimately, I think people are going to have a preference for whichever they learn first, and intuitively approximate.

For that reason, making a distinction between 'those fancy-pants science units' and 'good ol' everyday patriotic inches' strikes me as a foolish compromise that benefits neither.

I could probably object to other things in your original post as well, but maybe I'm just projecting my childhood biases the other way.

[1] for me, anyway. I've grown up with a bastard hybrid knowledge of mostly metric/SI, but enough exposure to imperial that I can intuit some, but not all of the conversions. Temperature is probably my weakest. I know from memory that 37oC ~98F, and that conversion is 5/8x + 32 or something along those lines. But to see '250F' and set my oven correctly, I have to think a bit. Or to guess if a temperature is below freezing or not.

Having a hobbyist/armchair interest in machining & woodworking, the mental mode-switching when reading/watching videos by Americans vs everyone else is jarring.

When it comes to grocery shopping the US system is bad. Take for example ground beef: There's a few brands, both with the same labels: grass fed, no hormones .etc etc.

What's the most important then? The price tag. But each unit of ground beef isn't always the same size: 1.08 lbs, or 1.23 lbs ,etc.

Fortunately vendors are required to put a price PER unit of weight. In metric system countries it would be : Brand A is 7€/kg, Brand B is 5€/kg , (and for the sake of the argument, Brand C is 0.65c per gram, but usually it's always per kg.) Which one is the cheapest? Easy answer. Brand B < Brand C < Brand A

In the US? One is $5/lbs , the other is 35c per Oz. Which one is the cheapest? In this base 10 world, It's a bit tricky to make base 16 conversion by head

Same with liquids: fl oz, gal, etc. with the Metric system? €/cl , €/l , they could even write €/ml, multiplying/dividing by 10, 100, or 1000 doesn't' requires a calculator. Even if you only have the price per unit, for the same brand: 1 bottle of 2L is $3, 6 bottle of 500ml is $3, here buying the 6 pack is better. (Usually the bigger the bottle, the cheaper per unit of volume, but not always, especially in the US)

In the US? 1 gallon is $3, but a 6 pack of 16 fl oz is $3, which one is the cheapest? 6*16 = 96. but 1 gallon is 128 floz, so the 6 pack is 75% of a gallon, so the gallon is cheaper here

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