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Comment by xyzzyz | Hacker News Reader

The international audience that put in years of effort to learn English can also put 10 minutes of effort to just learn Fahrenheit as well.

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> The international audience that put in years of effort to learn English can also put 10 minutes of effort to just learn Fahrenheit as well.

Most of the English-speaking world uses Celsius, just like most of the non-English-speaking world.

Just to be clear, the entire planet apart from Liberia and some tiny islands use Celsius, not just the English-speaking world, that's probably around 7.5 billion people if you are going for an extended audience.

This is a good map to illustrate the stark reality: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/countries...

ºF -> ºC is hard to intuit, even as a native English speaker (British) who grew up in the UK and studied chemistry to a high level. Not all English speakers use ºF.

Sure, I know 32ºF is the freezing point of water, 212ºF the boiling point, and yes I know the conversion equation, but still when I see (say) 104ºF I know it's "hot" but don't have my frame of reference in the right place to know how hot.

I mean, the basic rule of thumb I learned for C was that 20 is room temperature, above 30 is hot, below 0 is freezing

Same deal with F, 70 is room temperature, above 90 is hot and below 30 is freezing

That alone has been enough to help me switch back and forth between the two systems easily enough. Or at least I'm not shocked when 14 C is kinda chilly or when 95 F is damn hot

Granted, if you need to be more precise than that, then that comes down to having a calculator handy, but for common use this has been enough for me

Edit: In hindsight, this might just mean that as a F native, C is much easier to learn than the other way around

One thing helps me: 100ºF is around body temperature. That helps to set a mid-point between the other two temperature points like you described.

I know both pretty well.

My suggestion would be to stop trying to convert. The formula is the dumbest thing ever.

You need to make completely parallel associations.

Learn what “light jacket weather is”. Don’t convert, just use the other scale for several months or more, wake up look at the temperature and make the accurate choice.

Learn what shorts and tshirt weather is.

Make good predictions about what you’ll need to wear at bought based on the temperature lows.

Understand that hotter or colder might be unbearable.

Great advice if you have to read local weather reports regularly. The root comment was asking that writers include Celsius units in an article for a broad audience, which is also fair criticism.

You don’t have to be exact.

70F = 20C

Each 10F is ~5C.

50F = 10C

60F = 15C

80F = 25C

90F = 30C (33C precisely)

The US is the only country that uses F. It has nothing to do with speaking English. Every other English speaking country uses celsius.

Communication is a two-way effort.

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