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Comment by programLyrique | Hacker News Reader

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).

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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.

> 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.

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