Americans, what's so great about the Imperial System?

[Maze1125]

Really it's all arbitrary anyway!
a Meter is just a length of a rod based on some BS reason, same as a foot or a yard
Truth is we couldn't care less what stick you use to measure with
both work equally well and do a fine job of measuring things

so here's the REAL question;
Why do you Europeans get so bent out of shape that we Americans don't use your arbitrary definitions of measurement?

Here's are two arbitrary labelling systems for arranging files with names on.
The first takes the first letter of the person's surname and arranges the file according to that.
The second takes all the letters of the person's surname and the first letter of their first name, converts them to numerical form, sums them, adds 57, converts them back to a letter mod26, and then arranges the file according to that letter.

Both systems are arbitrary and both systems sort the names in 26 different ways and do a "fine" job of sorting the files. But one is needlessly complex and so can reasonably be considered a worse system.

Sure, the difference between metric and imperial isn't as extreme, but imperial is still unnecessarily complex compared to metric.

As for getting "bent out of shape", no-ones doing that. Rather I think most Europeans find it quite amusing that Americans refuse to switch to a better system.

 

[Kyrdra]

What? what is wrong with those people? Not only would that fundamentally screw up higher level math and those that use it, but even following the basic math rules of rounding, if anything it should be 3.1 not 3.2....

My brain kind of hurts now

This is the story I think.
It was in Indiana and not in texas so maybe it is a different story

And for the whole thing of SI vs Imperial: It would propably help the people to slowly change it but it would be pretty expensive

 

[Heronblade]

Really it's all arbitrary anyway!
a Meter is just a length of a rod based on some BS reason, same as a foot or a yard
Truth is we couldn't care less what stick you use to measure with
both work equally well and do a fine job of measuring things

so here's the REAL question;
Why do you Europeans get so bent out of shape that we Americans don't use your arbitrary definitions of measurement?

Actually, the meter is defined using the speed of light, it is a decidedly non arbitrary constant.

In fact, the only SI unit that is not tied to a universal constant of some kind is the Kilogram, and that is only due to a lack of convenient measurements to link it to

 

[Vegosiux]

Really it's all arbitrary anyway!
a Meter is just a length of a rod based on some BS reason, same as a foot or a yard
Truth is we couldn't care less what stick you use to measure with
both work equally well and do a fine job of measuring things

so here's the REAL question;
Why do you Europeans get so bent out of shape that we Americans don't use your arbitrary definitions of measurement?

Actually, the meter is defined using the speed of light, it is a decidedly non arbitrary constant.

In fact, the only SI unit that is not tied to a universal constant of some kind is the Kilogram, and that is only due to a lack of easy measurements to link it to

They could go with 1/12th of a kilomole of Carbon-12, but then we'd have the arbitrary Avogadro's number in it I suppose...

 

[Callate]

That seems completely arbitrary and is probably just based on what you're used to (Fahrenheit). When somebody says the temperatures are going to be in "the thirties", that makes a ton of sense to somebody who is used the Celsius. They'd know to expect a hot summer afternoon.

Anything from 70 to 110 Fahrenheit could be described as "a hot summer day". But to me there's an enormous difference between the 70s (dress more or less as you will), the 80s (better stick to t-shirts and possibly shorts, be mindful getting into hot cars) and the 90s and above (might want to plan a day around hopping between places with air conditioning.) Likewise, I grew up in a place where at 32 people still went outside and played in the snow, but at 0 they started to look at "exposed flesh freezes in 'x' minutes" charts.

Admittedly there's a degree (no pun intended) of the arbitrary about this, but perception does make a difference. There's a reason retailers go out of their way to avoid pricing up to the nearest one hundred; it actually makes a difference in the number of sales. Or in proper planning for weather.

A wider range makes for a more accurate description.

Quite weird. Don't you boil water in day-to-day life? Don't you freeze ice cubes?

If I want to boil water, I put it on a stove until it bubbles vigorously or a tea kettle starts whistling. If I want to freeze water, I put it in a freezer until it's solid.

But if I'm making a casserole, there's about 25 degrees difference between "nicely browned" and "burnt" in Fahrenheit, and only about ten to fifteen in Celsius.

 

[Lieju]

Really it's all arbitrary anyway!
a Meter is just a length of a rod based on some BS reason, same as a foot or a yard
Truth is we couldn't care less what stick you use to measure with
both work equally well and do a fine job of measuring things

so here's the REAL question;
Why do you Europeans get so bent out of shape that we Americans don't use your arbitrary definitions of measurement?

Because people have to deal with both, and it would be practical to have uniformity in this. And since metric is more common and more scientific, it would be better if everyone used it.
And for your information, it's not 'Europeans', it's the predominant system in all other countries than Burma, Liberia and the United States. (Countries like UK use imprial a lot in daily use, though)

Any scientific or engineering field is going to use metric, so converting it to imperial only wastes resources and time.

Imperial is probably the same for daily use, but beyond that...
Madness.

 

[Verlander]

There are many advantages to a dozenal system:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal

(but metric works better than imperial for the time being)

 

[Maze1125]

A wider range makes for a more accurate description.

Okay, this whole accuracy argument is total bollocks.
If you want accuracy, that's what decimals are for. They go as arbitrarily accurate as you want.
Alternatively, if you don't want to use decimals, then you clearly don't care about accuracy that much.

Either way, accuracy isn't a reasonable excuse to use imperial. You'd be far better of saying "I use imperial because I like it." That, at least, is a valid opinion.

 

[drthmik]

Really it's all arbitrary anyway!
a Meter is just a length of a rod based on some BS reason, same as a foot or a yard
Truth is we couldn't care less what stick you use to measure with
both work equally well and do a fine job of measuring things

so here's the REAL question;
Why do you Europeans get so bent out of shape that we Americans don't use your arbitrary definitions of measurement?

Actually, the meter is defined using the speed of light, it is a decidedly non arbitrary constant.

In fact, the only SI unit that is not tied to a universal constant of some kind is the Kilogram, and that is only due to a lack of easy measurements to link it to

Look at that
Wikipidia agrees with you! sort of...

"The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1 / 299,792,458 of a second."

... Wait that's not divisible by 10

And since meters were developed by the french after the french revolution you can't say that the meter is BASED on the speed of light
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light

and light travels 1 foot in 1 nanosecond
so what?
You carve up the distance light travels into a certain number of chunks
We cave it up into a different number of chunks
that is the definition of arbitrary

 

[blaize2010]

Well, the tip of your thumb is about an inch, so it's nice to be able to shorthand measure things. That's about all I've got though.

 

[lacktheknack]

I can agree that the metric system is better in almost all things, except temperature. Maybe it's because we are used to it, but if I go outside and it's oven roasting hot, it seems to make more sense to me to say "man, must be at least 100 degrees outside!" than to say "man must be at least 40 degrees outside!" etc

On our vacation to Hawai'i, you have no idea how much this tripped us up.

http://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/10_day_forecast.png

 

[MorphingDragon]

Because I would rather say I was 6'4" or 76 inches instead of saying I'm 193.04 centimeters tall.

That just makes me sound tall as fuck.....

1.9m also makes you sound tall as fuck.

Maybe its because you are tall as fuck. I'm 6'and already seem tall as fuck compared to most other people.

 

[Xanarch]

Having flipped back and forth between school in Europe and the US, I bake in grams and weigh myself in pounds, measure distance in miles and do carpentry in centimeters, drink pints of beer and take cough syrup in millilitres (and don't get me started on US vs British spellings), wear a sweater at 10C and shorts at 80F. Metric is great for precision and imperial is nice (for me at least) for knowing how big something is. There is something insane about a system that requires a person to know how many gills are in a hogshead when used for scientific purposes, but it's rather charming, in an archaic fashion, when used discussing Jules Verne over a flagon of ale. I also find it amusing that the cost of switching to metric would be expressed in a decimalised currency. Should it not be quoted in guineas?

My grandmother lived through three currency changes, currency decimalisation and the switch to metric and she still knew at 90 that she wouldn't pay ?2 for 500 grams of bruised tomatoes. People can adjust to pretty much anything.

Added xenophobia, just for laughs: Yanks use imperial because they beat the Brits, so they feel they've earned it; the metric system is French, and there's no way they're buying their Freedom Fries by the gramme. Damned if we Irish will ever accept the US pint though - 473 mL vs 568 mL?? Now yer just taking the piss.

 

[Vegosiux]

Look at that
Wikipidia agrees with you! sort of...

"The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1 / 299,792,458 of a second."

... Wait that's not divisible by 10

On that point, I've often said that inventing an entirely new metric system, stil a decimal one, but with quantities defined so that all natural constants would be simply some power of ten instead would be kind of awesome.

Say, the speed of light defined to 10^8 bloits/second, so one bloit would be the distance light travels in 0.00000001 seconds.

I'm sure it would also be fun to calculate the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow in bloits.

 

[Heronblade]

Really it's all arbitrary anyway!
a Meter is just a length of a rod based on some BS reason, same as a foot or a yard
Truth is we couldn't care less what stick you use to measure with
both work equally well and do a fine job of measuring things

so here's the REAL question;
Why do you Europeans get so bent out of shape that we Americans don't use your arbitrary definitions of measurement?

Actually, the meter is defined using the speed of light, it is a decidedly non arbitrary constant.

In fact, the only SI unit that is not tied to a universal constant of some kind is the Kilogram, and that is only due to a lack of easy measurements to link it to

Look at that
Wikipidia agrees with you! sort of...

"The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1 / 299,792,458 of a second."

... Wait that's not divisible by 10

And since meters were developed by the french after the french revolution you can't say that the meter is BASED on the speed of light
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_the_metre
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speed_of_light

and light travels 1 foot in 1 nanosecond
so what?
You carve up the distance light travels into a certain number of chunks
We cave it up into a different number of chunks
that is the definition of arbitrary

Uh, you seem to have missed a detail when you asked wikipedia about this, namely "Its value is exactly 299,792,458 metres per second, a figure that is exact because the length of the metre is defined from this constant and the international standard for time"

Meanwhile, the foot comes from a variety of different sources. Before it was standardized as exactly one third of a yard (which in turn was arbitrarily declared to be 0.9144 meters in an agreement between various countries, this value was a rounded average of the previous ratios), the measure of a foot varied by as much as 3 to 4 inches

P.S. light travels approximately 0.98357105643 feet in one nanosecond, the exact value is a nonrepeating decimal that goes on forever, they just rounded up for your convenience.

 

[Maze1125]

I'm sure it would also be fun to calculate the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow in bloits.

African or European?

 

[Jadak]

I only really tend to use imperial for things like weight, where the advantages of metric are irrelevant for anything non-technical.

For example, if I'm thinking to myself..

I weight 89 kg.

Okay, how heavy is a kilogram?

1000 grams.

Alright... How heavy is a gram?

1000 milligrams.

Great, how heavy is that?

I don't fucking know, I have no sense of what these weights actually are. The words mean nothing to me beyond the numbers.

It's great for math, but as for as having any conceptual sense of those weights in my head, I've got nothing. Now, Imperial measurement isn't any better with this, but having grown up talking about weight in 'pounds', I have a sense of how heavy a given number of pounds actually is. So, yes it sucks, but the only advantage of metric is in math, and since I don't need any complicated math in my life for weight, metric holds no benefit to motivate me into switching.

 

[Luke Bean]

The differences between imperial and metric just don't matter for most everyday purposes. Obviously the metric system is dramatically superior for anything involving science or engineering, but most people don't deal with that on an everyday basis, and Americans who do all use the metric system for it anyway.

For several common uses, imperial works well BECAUSE it's slapped together based on measurements humans can readily grasp. Using both feet and inches for height rather than just centimeters is sort of like pinpointing where you are in the year using both months and days rather than just saying "it's the 212th day of the year"-- the feet / months give us a sense of the general scale, and the inches / days make it more precise.

Volume measurements are simpler for keeping track of cooking ingredients. "Two cups of flour, half cup of sugar, and a teaspoon of baking soda" is simpler than keeping track of measurements in milliliters.

These advantages are pretty trivial, of course, and the real reason America uses imperial measurements is inertia. Theoretically, use of imperial measurements could cause illiteracy in metric, causing a disadvantage in scientific education. But in practice it doesn't really seem to have had that effect. American science and engineering are still very well developed, and as far as I can tell most Americans can use both systems. Making the switch seems like more pain than it's worth.

 

[MorganL4]

Well the US was GOING to switch to the metric system with everyone else back when Thomas Jefferson was president. He even sent a representative to a scientific meeting in France where the whole idea was being put forth. But then the US representative sent the measuring units to New York on one ship, and chartered a different one for himself. The ship he was on got stuck in the Caribbean. I can't remember if it was disease that killed him, or natives but the end result was that the measuring units showed up in New York where there was going to be a scientific presentation on them, but because the guy who was going to explain what they were didn't show up (for lack of being alive) they were sent off to an auction house... So ended the US flirtation with metric.

Sad, but true story.

 

[drthmik]

Look at that
Wikipidia agrees with you! sort of...

"The metre is the length of the path travelled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1 / 299,792,458 of a second."

... Wait that's not divisible by 10

On that point, I've often said that inventing an entirely new metric system, stil a decimal one, but with quantities defined so that all natural constants would be simply some power of ten instead would be kind of awesome.

Say, the speed of light defined to 10^8 bloits/second, so one bloit would be the distance light travels in 0.00000001 seconds.

I'm sure it would also be fun to calculate the average airspeed velocity of an unladen swallow in bloits.

LOL that would be hilarious!
But seriously the speed of light HAS NO MEANING in every day life
every measurement is just a stick of a length that everyone agrees is that length
Celsius is based on 0 being the freezing point of fresh water
Fahrenheit is based on 0 being the freezing point of Sea Water (and being from a northern state it is rather convenient knowing that around 0 degrees salt won't melt the ice on the roads anymore)

Yet it all has nothing to do with science or math
it's culture

as a culture we have agreed that we will use feet and miles and degrees Fahrenheit and pounds and gallons for our measurements. Then along comes France and later the rest of Europe saying YOU MUST CHANGE YOUR CULTURE TO MEET OUR STANDARDS!
As Americans, our gut reaction to that as a culture has long been; "Fuck You! We don't HAVE to do anything you say!"
truth is we probably would have switched all on our own LONG ago had Europe just quietly used their metric system and allowed us to figure out it's superiority for ourselves. We were well on our way! When I was in school Metric was the only measurement used in my middle school. they had completely switched over and had to switch back a few years after I was in High School so that kids could also learn the Imperial system they HAD to know to FUNCTION in society!

but they had to push it, force it, insist we follow them. Mock us for being different. call us stupid or ignorant or backwards.
Now? We'll almost certainly NEVER change
Why?
Fuck you that's why
And I find the whole situation HILARIOUS! XD