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Comment by randomdata | Hacker News Reader

I was raised metric, but still find utility in the imperial system under some circumstances. I use my anatomy to measure things all the time while out on the farm, for instance. You could say step off 914cms, but I think 30 feet makes more sense in the context since you are literally counting your steps.

If you have precise measuring tools at your disposal, then I'm inclined to agree though.

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I disagree. A meter is a reasonable approximation of most adults's step length, but a foot is not.

Everyone who works on my farm has a foot that is approximately 30cms, so it works great. If we all had 15cm feet, then we'd say you need to step off 60 feet in the aforementioned example. It is not strictly bound by the imperial system, it just so happens that the imperial system maps fairly well to what is practical in the field without any tools, so it is what we reference. I see no benefit to introducing the metric system here, despite using it in all other areas of life.

I think GP meant you wrote "step" but you are talking about "foot". Namely, you can count 90m putting your feet in front of each other 30 times.

If instead of putting your feet in front of each othr you actually take a step you should get closer to 1m.

(most people I met measure distances with 1m = 1step when playing european football, for example and you have to be at X meters from the ball por something)

A metric user would measure the same distance to "approximately 9 meters" by taking 9 large steps. This is a very common informal method of measuring distances.

It seems more practical (and certainly faster) than to measure the distance to "approximately 30 feet" by putting one foot just in front of the other 30 times.

One meter is approximately one large step for a grown man.

Bonus: there are on average 20 centimeters between the thumb and the little finger of a fully stretched hand.

This doesn't make any sense. 1ft is ~30cm. Just measure in units of 30cm. Doing the math in your head is trivial.

But why needlessly introduce the math, no matter how trivial it may actually be?

We are constantly needlessly introducing math across all of our industries that have international partners by keeping our current system. Your point to which I was responding was that you feel it is more natural to measure in units of feet. I was pointing out to you that you can make the same measurement in a convenient unit in the metric system. We can have ease of use in both cases with the metric system.

But it doesn't matter anyway. You could sit and invent an infinite number of cases when using the imperial system "feels" easier. None of these invalidate the conveniences of the metric system, nor do they remove the compelling motivation to setup our system in line with that of the rest of the world to stop the waste of money, material, and time the is now spent on conversion, dual labeling, and confusion.

Communicating the number of steps to, say, position your tractor in the field is a long way from having international partners and dual labelling. It is still not clear to me why one would introduce the metric system into the specific case when the simplest form, the length of your foot, will do perfectly.

My foot is not one foot long, so your customary measure and mine don't match. One of us will need to convert, and we'll need a conversion table for each person.

Unless all of the people you deal with have nearly the same foot size, it's easier to deal with a single reference measure. But hey, if you and your mates want to say that the tractor is 30 feet, 20 cubits, 10 yards, 5 fathoms, or 1.8 rods away, then more power to you.

That's a good question, and one that arguably appears more often when using Imperial/Standard.

How about 10 meters?

A small anecdote. My father was very accurate and fast to measure distance in meters using his steps. Very useful in construction. You would not use centimeters in this use case.

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