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Comment by coldtea | Hacker News Reader

I could perhaps understand the use of fahrenheit for temperature - I'm not used to it, but people say the changes in different temperature degrees are more like how we perceive them (perhaps temperature is like some things like sound level that we perceive logarithmically, and ferenheit maps better to it [1]).

Not sure if this is valid (celsius looks fine to me) but if it is, sure, fahrenheit makes sense.

But for the rest, like distance and weight? What the fuck?!

[1] I'm not claiming we do perceive temperature logarithmically - just making an analogy with another case (sound) in which we don't use a straight linear relationship because it doesn't match our intuitive perception (e.g. of volume "doubling").

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Fahrenheit is nice because the normal range of temps for most climates that humans generally prefer to inhabit is about 0 to 100. Over 100 starts to be dangerous to humans without some form of cooling, evaporative or otherwise. 0 F (-18 C) is about as cold a temp as most (not all) people would want to live in. Ironically, viewed from that perspective, Fahrenheit gives typical temps a nice powers of ten framework, which is normally one of the great advantages of metric systems. Celsius fails in this regard, going from -18 C to 28 C for the same range. Less precision and no intuitive decimal framework.

On the other hand, I completely agree that the rest of the non-metric measurements are just a mess. However, the binary nature of cups, pints, quarts, half gallons, and gallons are kind of quaint I suppose.

What do you mean? Fahrenheit is not logarithmic. The conversion function from Fahrenheit to Celsius is literallay a linear function: c(f) = f(5/9) - (160/9)

>What do you mean? Fahrenheit is not logarithmic.

It's not like I didn't explicitly cover that:

"I'm not claiming we do perceive temperature logarithmically - just making an analogy with another case (sound) in which we don't use a straight linear relationship because it doesn't match our intuitive perception (e.g. of volume "doubling")."

So, no, I'm not saying temperature perception is logarithmic and Fahrenheit is logarithmic to match it.

I'm just saying that similarly to how dB suits sound perception better (because it's logarithmic and more appropriate to our logarithmic perception of volume), fahrenheit might fit intuitive temperature perception better (because it's more appropriate to our perception of temperature).

Actually, I'm not even saying this is the case. Just that I've read and heard people claim that, so it could be (I'm not from a fahrenheit using country, so can't speal for how it intuitively feels), for one example:

https://thevane.gawker.com/fahrenheit-is-a-better-temperatur...

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