The problem is that most people don't need to measure things in day to day life, they only need to estimate.
Those that do need to measure already know that they have to track units no matter which system of measurement they use (as the difference between entering grams by accident instead of kilograms is 3 orders of magnitude!)
Your foot is much closer to a foot than to a meter. Your cup is more cup-sized than liter-sized. An average guy's thumb is about an inch across, not a centimeter. Having sizes of things that are more common and relateable is important.
Yeah but saying that conforming to supposed real objects is ridiculous. Metric is great because it doesn't correspond to anything in particular, thus there can be no mistakes - a metre is a metre!
So to summarize, the defence is "feet seem easier to eyeball than meters" and "some people in the world still use Imperial".
It is indeed contrarian. Also stating that metric is derived form real physical properties of the universe "is about as useless and arbitrary in daily life that seriously, who cares" -- so it's useless to know that 1 liter of water is 1 kg?
The best defense came in the comments, divisibility.
Metric 10s can only be divided by 2 and 5 and thats about it without breaking out fractions and decimals, but imperial 12s and 16s are awesome for practical commerce because its so easily divided.
Probably the best compromise that offends both sides equally would be using metric as the root unit and multiplier concept, with hexadecimal to express multiples.
So 0xD3 hex kilograms would be 211 decimal kilograms, and a kilogram would be 16 times 16 times 16 grams not 10 times 10 times 10 grams, so that would be 864256 decimal grams aka 0xd3000 hex grams or very near 1900 decimal pounds. So a wood pallet with 0xD3 kilos of product on it with some packaging material weighs about a old fashioned ton in total.
Either that or we should offend everyone equally by switching to a small prime number base to eliminate the usefulness of divisibility... so henceforth an imperial pound shall be precisely 7 ounces not more not less. Suddenly metric starts sounding better...
> The metric system was originally developed by scientists during the enlightenment, but became the political tool it is today as part of the French revolution, yes it was brought to you by the good folks who also brought you the guillotine.
I forget the latin term for why this is a bad argument.
> An inch is a thumb length.
You have tiny thumbs.
> For measuring the length of something smallish like a notebook 15 inches just seems easier to relate to than 38 cm.
Which is why most people would probably say something like "40 cm" instead of 38.
> When measuring a room feet just seems an easier unit to eyeball.
Because you're used to measuring room sizes in square feet. Is it difficult to eyeball yards? Because my rule of thumb (or should it be "rule of inch"?) is that a meter is about a yard. If you can eyeball feet, you can eyeball meters.
> Almost all recipe’s call for a pound of meat as it’s a kind of natural portion amount of meat to cook with.
Of course, because we're living in a country where we use imperial measures. This is about as surprising and about as convincing as the fact that encyclopedias claim that the United States Congress has 435 members.
>> The metric system was originally developed by scientists during the enlightenment, but became the political tool it is today as part of the French revolution, yes it was brought to you by the good folks who also brought you the guillotine.
>I forget the latin term for why this is a bad argument.
What exactly is a pound? Is it a mass? If not, what is the Imperial equivalent? This confused the hell out of me the first time I took uni physics. I had an older gentleman teach the class who kept talking about slugs.
And just to anger metric people: How heavy is Le Gran K today? (note that I prefer metric)
Inches to feet is base 12. Feet to yards are base 3. Feet to Miles is base 5280. WHAT?
We can go on and on about the imperial system, and many do. The "funny" fact of the matter is this guy is pontificating mainly because of familiarity, and not any scientific rigor. His best argument is that Imperial measurements are based on eyeballing. So can metric, if you are familiar with them.
> His best argument is that Imperial measurements are based on eyeballing. So can metric, if you are familiar with them.
I think people pushing for metric in the U.S. keep forgetting that they are pushing against the status quo. I.e. there must be a positive net benefit to the change they want for there to be a reasonable shot at getting the vast entrenched infrastructure of units displaced.
Saying "but but metric can do this too!!" isn't good enough. Metric needs to be better and the fact of the matter is that U.S. imperial units are good enough for the day to day life of the average citizen (who for the most part don't even go around converting imperial units, making any improvement in how conversions can be calculated a moot point).
My funny jab about Le Gran K goes back to the similar reason why Imperial measurements were dumb: the damned measurement (weight) changes.
Le Gran K is a weight stored in France that every kilogram weight is measured against. This weight, made of iridium and platinum is measured every 40 years. Every weigh in has been different.
Every other metric measurement is keyed in upon a hard constant of nature. A meter is some fraction of C. A second is the number of vibrations in a rarefied caesium gas. The kilogram is a weight that's compared to a bunch of others?!
I do remember some chemists working back in '08 about the calculation of a precise kilogram by definition of the exact number of atoms of carbon-12 in a cube. They worked out the math, and determined an exact number of atoms.*
"who for the most part don't even go around converting imperial units"
This is the key line which MUST be understood, no matter which side of the argument you're on. Its a sig fig issue.
Converting feet to miles is a nearly useless activity. A mile is the minimum human discernible distance for a marching roman legion, in that no human can tell the difference between a 8.2 and a 8.3 mile march at the end of the day, but most can, at the end of the day, tell the difference between 8 and 9 miles of march. So the minimum human sized unit for marching distance is the mile.
Ditto degrees F, although the probably apocryphal story about the local weather fitting in a 0 to 100 degree range is probably almost as good a reason as most humans can not discern temps finer than one degree.
Another sig fig issue rears its head where frankly unless you're a pastry chef "any ole cup" is close enough to Plato's concept of the ideal form of a cup or a chemists concept of a graduated cylinder for successful cooking or virtually all dishes. If your soup turns out foul its because of substandard ingredients or technique, not because you used 1001 ml of water instead of 1000 ml.
I like metric as a conformity thing in science and engineering, but its not inherently any better. You can do useless things that almost no one ever needs to do easier in one system or another, but it doesn't matter most of the time, so just conform and when in rome do as the romans do.
A pound (speaking very technically, such that only physics teachers would point this out) is a unit of force, not mass. The "imperial" unit of mass is a slug, which weighs about 32 pounds at sea level. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Slug_%28mass%29 The metric unit of force is a Newton, equivalent to ~3.6 ounces of force.
I well realize that now. Many of us worked with metric in the sciences for our university career, as well as prior high/middle/ele school teachings of metrication. Some of the lesser known units of imperial measure throw us off.
I asked him to please explain this unfamiliar unit to us. He was rather surprised we hadn't heard of it prior. One very good thing about metric is that it is precise in the definitions of the units. Hence the distinction between kg and N.
Added note: even though pound may be technically a force measurement, it at first confused the hell out of me how a pascal( N/m^2) could be converted to lbs/in^2. I did wonder what exactly a pound was, but soon didn't really care. After all, we didn't really use imperial much, with exception of general "consumer measurements".
The article is not anti metric it's pro imperial units for the things that imperial units are good for.
Nassim Taleb makes the exact same argument in his latest book Anti Fragile.
Imperial units can be used and understood by people who can't even read.
Metric units are not necessarily bad and has all kinds of important aspect. But we geeks shouldn't force it on the rest of the world, just to satisfy our geek sensibilities.
I think there are some rather poor arguments in the post. The primary one seems to be that imperial units are easier to eyeball, but I'd say that's only because the author is used to the imperial system. If you're used to meters and not feet I don't see why it would be harder to judge the length of a room in meters than in feet. The author mentions cups as a good measure, because it's inherently easy to judge since you know how big a cup is. In my kitchen the largest cup can hold around 3 times as much as the smallest cup though...
When actually doing calculations with imperial units it becomes obvious that it's an absolute mess. If you don't believe me try to calculate which holds more volume without converting to the metric system; a box with the dimensions 2 feet 3 5/8 inches by 3 feet 1 1/4 inches by 2 feet 7/16 inches or a sphere with a diameter of 3 feet 2 17/32 inches.
I suspect some of these examples also come down to making much hay of the lack of decimalization in Imperial units, combined with the way a name has been assigned to just about every possible subdivision of each unit. 250mL isn't really any harder than a cup, nor is 500mL harder than a pint. And we could make them sound just as cuddly by assigning them special names.
But I think a lot is lost in that, by way of usability. Here's a quiz: You're planning a party. How many pint servings of beer can you get out of a 15 gallon keg? Now let's do it in Metric. How many half-liter servings of beer can you get out of a 50 liter keg?
I think most anyone will instantly recognize that in the latter case you just need to multiply 50 by 2 to get the answer. But most people will probably have to stop and think through a couple layers of unit conversion (four quarts in a gallon, two pints in a quart) before realizing that you can multiply 15*8 to get the first figure. Heck, I suspect that even among people who grew up with Imperial units a lot might get stuck without a hint.
"It’s way more natural to use a cup of liquid as the base of a recipe than deciliters"? Really? What if I have a recipe for 5 people that I want to scale down for my 3-person family. What's 60% of a cup? A half cup plus a roughly half-full quarter cup?
This is much easier when the amount is expressed as 240ml.
Disclaimer: I'm an engineer. I also brew beer and bake bread, so I'm often scaling recipes.
An inch is a thumb's width, not its length. Likely chosen over length because it is ergonomically easier than measuring along its length. Also: what part do you measure? First phalange? Both? Inside? Outside?
That might be a way to measure short lengths of wire, but a cylindrical thumb with a girth of one inch would have a diameter of about 8mm, so no, it wouldn't, unless it was invented by an aye-aye.
It's amusing that the author's first reference to "Imperial" units is a reference to their use in "Joy of Cooking", which uses US Customary -- not Imperial -- units.
Of course, the two systems are very similar, sharing many units and sharing the names of other units. But that's actually part of the problem with the Imperial system and its relatives -- works rarely explicitly note which system they are using, so if something uses a system with unit names that look like Imperial units, you have to deduce from place of origin which system is actually in use (and since in many cases the Imperial and related systems have same-named units of the same dimension in the same system that are used by convention for different purposes, you have to deduce from context which unit is actually being used even when you know which system is being used.)
And that's why its better to use a system where there is never an ambiguity in which units are actually being used.
> French revolution, yes it was brought to you by the good folks who also brought you the guillotine. Thus it was imposed on people from above to better their lives
The people of France imposed it on themselves. Riiiight.
> Everyone in England thinks in pounds, stones (yes stones), miles and feet.
No, we don't. Don't speak for me.
A variable base numbering system is utterly absurd and needs to die.
Saying that imperial measurements conform to "real" things is a fallacy, because feet and cups and whatnot are of varying sizes. A metre is an exact length, which we can picture. Feet vary greatly in size.
26 comments
[ 2.1 ms ] story [ 74.9 ms ] threadNot really much of a killer argument: my foot is not the size of someone else's foot. Nor is my cup. Nor is my thumb length.
Those that do need to measure already know that they have to track units no matter which system of measurement they use (as the difference between entering grams by accident instead of kilograms is 3 orders of magnitude!)
It is indeed contrarian. Also stating that metric is derived form real physical properties of the universe "is about as useless and arbitrary in daily life that seriously, who cares" -- so it's useless to know that 1 liter of water is 1 kg?
Metric 10s can only be divided by 2 and 5 and thats about it without breaking out fractions and decimals, but imperial 12s and 16s are awesome for practical commerce because its so easily divided.
Probably the best compromise that offends both sides equally would be using metric as the root unit and multiplier concept, with hexadecimal to express multiples.
So 0xD3 hex kilograms would be 211 decimal kilograms, and a kilogram would be 16 times 16 times 16 grams not 10 times 10 times 10 grams, so that would be 864256 decimal grams aka 0xd3000 hex grams or very near 1900 decimal pounds. So a wood pallet with 0xD3 kilos of product on it with some packaging material weighs about a old fashioned ton in total.
Either that or we should offend everyone equally by switching to a small prime number base to eliminate the usefulness of divisibility... so henceforth an imperial pound shall be precisely 7 ounces not more not less. Suddenly metric starts sounding better...
I forget the latin term for why this is a bad argument.
> An inch is a thumb length.
You have tiny thumbs.
> For measuring the length of something smallish like a notebook 15 inches just seems easier to relate to than 38 cm.
Which is why most people would probably say something like "40 cm" instead of 38.
> When measuring a room feet just seems an easier unit to eyeball.
Because you're used to measuring room sizes in square feet. Is it difficult to eyeball yards? Because my rule of thumb (or should it be "rule of inch"?) is that a meter is about a yard. If you can eyeball feet, you can eyeball meters.
> Almost all recipe’s call for a pound of meat as it’s a kind of natural portion amount of meat to cook with.
Of course, because we're living in a country where we use imperial measures. This is about as surprising and about as convincing as the fact that encyclopedias claim that the United States Congress has 435 members.
>I forget the latin term for why this is a bad argument.
That latin would be, I think, "brainus fuckus" :)
And just to anger metric people: How heavy is Le Gran K today? (note that I prefer metric)
Inches to feet is base 12. Feet to yards are base 3. Feet to Miles is base 5280. WHAT?
We can go on and on about the imperial system, and many do. The "funny" fact of the matter is this guy is pontificating mainly because of familiarity, and not any scientific rigor. His best argument is that Imperial measurements are based on eyeballing. So can metric, if you are familiar with them.
I think people pushing for metric in the U.S. keep forgetting that they are pushing against the status quo. I.e. there must be a positive net benefit to the change they want for there to be a reasonable shot at getting the vast entrenched infrastructure of units displaced.
Saying "but but metric can do this too!!" isn't good enough. Metric needs to be better and the fact of the matter is that U.S. imperial units are good enough for the day to day life of the average citizen (who for the most part don't even go around converting imperial units, making any improvement in how conversions can be calculated a moot point).
Le Gran K is a weight stored in France that every kilogram weight is measured against. This weight, made of iridium and platinum is measured every 40 years. Every weigh in has been different.
Every other metric measurement is keyed in upon a hard constant of nature. A meter is some fraction of C. A second is the number of vibrations in a rarefied caesium gas. The kilogram is a weight that's compared to a bunch of others?!
I do remember some chemists working back in '08 about the calculation of a precise kilogram by definition of the exact number of atoms of carbon-12 in a cube. They worked out the math, and determined an exact number of atoms.*
* http://gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/newsrelease/kilogram.htm
This is the key line which MUST be understood, no matter which side of the argument you're on. Its a sig fig issue.
Converting feet to miles is a nearly useless activity. A mile is the minimum human discernible distance for a marching roman legion, in that no human can tell the difference between a 8.2 and a 8.3 mile march at the end of the day, but most can, at the end of the day, tell the difference between 8 and 9 miles of march. So the minimum human sized unit for marching distance is the mile.
Ditto degrees F, although the probably apocryphal story about the local weather fitting in a 0 to 100 degree range is probably almost as good a reason as most humans can not discern temps finer than one degree.
Another sig fig issue rears its head where frankly unless you're a pastry chef "any ole cup" is close enough to Plato's concept of the ideal form of a cup or a chemists concept of a graduated cylinder for successful cooking or virtually all dishes. If your soup turns out foul its because of substandard ingredients or technique, not because you used 1001 ml of water instead of 1000 ml.
I like metric as a conformity thing in science and engineering, but its not inherently any better. You can do useless things that almost no one ever needs to do easier in one system or another, but it doesn't matter most of the time, so just conform and when in rome do as the romans do.
I asked him to please explain this unfamiliar unit to us. He was rather surprised we hadn't heard of it prior. One very good thing about metric is that it is precise in the definitions of the units. Hence the distinction between kg and N.
Added note: even though pound may be technically a force measurement, it at first confused the hell out of me how a pascal( N/m^2) could be converted to lbs/in^2. I did wonder what exactly a pound was, but soon didn't really care. After all, we didn't really use imperial much, with exception of general "consumer measurements".
Nassim Taleb makes the exact same argument in his latest book Anti Fragile.
Imperial units can be used and understood by people who can't even read.
Metric units are not necessarily bad and has all kinds of important aspect. But we geeks shouldn't force it on the rest of the world, just to satisfy our geek sensibilities.
When actually doing calculations with imperial units it becomes obvious that it's an absolute mess. If you don't believe me try to calculate which holds more volume without converting to the metric system; a box with the dimensions 2 feet 3 5/8 inches by 3 feet 1 1/4 inches by 2 feet 7/16 inches or a sphere with a diameter of 3 feet 2 17/32 inches.
But I think a lot is lost in that, by way of usability. Here's a quiz: You're planning a party. How many pint servings of beer can you get out of a 15 gallon keg? Now let's do it in Metric. How many half-liter servings of beer can you get out of a 50 liter keg?
I think most anyone will instantly recognize that in the latter case you just need to multiply 50 by 2 to get the answer. But most people will probably have to stop and think through a couple layers of unit conversion (four quarts in a gallon, two pints in a quart) before realizing that you can multiply 15*8 to get the first figure. Heck, I suspect that even among people who grew up with Imperial units a lot might get stuck without a hint.
This is much easier when the amount is expressed as 240ml.
Disclaimer: I'm an engineer. I also brew beer and bake bread, so I'm often scaling recipes.
When I make short meads, I do it a little more off the cuff.. Then it's what tastes right for the honey water in terms of concentration.
An inch is a thumb's width, not its length. Likely chosen over length because it is ergonomically easier than measuring along its length. Also: what part do you measure? First phalange? Both? Inside? Outside?
Of course, the two systems are very similar, sharing many units and sharing the names of other units. But that's actually part of the problem with the Imperial system and its relatives -- works rarely explicitly note which system they are using, so if something uses a system with unit names that look like Imperial units, you have to deduce from place of origin which system is actually in use (and since in many cases the Imperial and related systems have same-named units of the same dimension in the same system that are used by convention for different purposes, you have to deduce from context which unit is actually being used even when you know which system is being used.)
And that's why its better to use a system where there is never an ambiguity in which units are actually being used.
The people of France imposed it on themselves. Riiiight.
> Everyone in England thinks in pounds, stones (yes stones), miles and feet.
No, we don't. Don't speak for me.
A variable base numbering system is utterly absurd and needs to die.
Saying that imperial measurements conform to "real" things is a fallacy, because feet and cups and whatnot are of varying sizes. A metre is an exact length, which we can picture. Feet vary greatly in size.
Basically this article is total bunk.