I Will Never Use the Metric System [video]
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Growing up in the US I have had so many teachers at every single layer of schooling launch into a speech how dumb our units of measurement are and how much better the metric system is. Yet we all still use it and it makes no difference in our everyday lives.
I’ve never heard anyone say anything positive about the imperial system. I don’t care very much, but I don’t really mind it. A foot is a decently intuitive unit of measurement for everyday things, it’s helpful how “human” the units are. Like a tallish person is a nice round 6 feet, other body parts are 5, 6, 7 inches etc. Everyday objects are single digit roundish numbers in inches and pounds. I think that’s part of why it’s extra sticky here.
Like saying “he is 6 feet tall” is slightly more ergonomic than saying “he is 1.83 meters tall” or “he is 182cm tall”. Both of the common metric versions of that measurement are less ergonomic than 6ft. cm feels too big and m feels too small.
Another way to put it is that the range of measurements for many everyday things often fits on your two hands.
Another example “I have a 7 inch penis” translated to, “I have a 17.78cm penis”, subjectively doesn’t feel the same in conversations.
The number 7 subjectively fits in your mind a little easier than 17.78.
Anyway, as I said I don’t disagree with you, the metric system is better in a lot of ways and I’m happy to use it when I can, but I do think that people spend far too much time talking about how superior their big brain unit of measurement is when it doesn’t really matter that much.
I can counter with that saying 180 cm is a lot easier than 5 feet 10.86 inches. No one says that, similar to that no one would say 17.78.
What’s convenient with metric is that there isn’t any difference between saying 180 or 179 cm. You just say, “one seventy nine”, not “one hundred and seventy nine”. Here I am showing what I am used to.
In your counter example, I would just round the imperial units to 5 feet 11 inches or 6 feet in everyday conversation. My point is that whether it's 180 vs 18 vs 1.8 all of those powers of ten are just a little bit less ergonomic because they do not fit nicely onto my two counting hands. 5 and 6 do fit nicely on my hands (and in my head) and so are just a tiny bit nicer to use every day.
To be honest, if the meter was closer to the size of a foot the metric system would have the same advantage. The powers of ten part is the good part of the system, not necessarily the absolute sizes of the base units.
I agree that if I grew up with it I would think it is fine. It is just what you're used to. I'm just expressing an opinion, I don't know why everyone needs to downvote me, I keep saying that metric is better.
Metrics allow to look into much large range inside the same system, which allows quick mental estimations; converting parts of an inch into feet or yards are less convenient. Then we can talk about areas and volumes, where metrics multiply nicely, but with imperials there's a whole set of special units.
When you talk about a 7-inch penis you're rounding off the length to the nearest unit. Or do you really have a 7.00 inch penis, rather than a 7.11 inch penis or a 6.93 inch penis?
If we're talking penis length in centimetres, you'd round off the number same way you'd round off the number of inches. So you wouldn't say "I've got a 17.78 cm penis", you'd say "I've got an 18 centimetre penis."
In the same way, instead of trying to buy a pound of meat in metric, you would not say "I want 453 grams of fillet", you would say "I'll have half a kilo of fillet, thanks." And just as the butcher would never weigh out exactly 1.00 pounds of meat, he's just as likely to weigh out half a kilo of meat plus or minus maybe 10 or 20 grams.
Temperatures are a good example of this, and I saw a wonderful graphic/meme a few years ago I can put here in print:
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F - 0º 100º - pretty cold, pretty hot
C - 0º 100º- cold, dead
K - 0º 100º - dead, still dead
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Imperial units are not objectively "better" than Metric units
Neither are Metric units objectively "better" than Imperial units
You can definitely tell Imperial is meant for "human" or "comfort" use vs Metric's "scientific" or "precision" use, though
Well, there's no line on the stick for that. You go back to the boss, and say this meter stick isn't accurate enough; Its only marked to centimeters. So he grumbles, buys you one which is marked to millimeters, and you try again....still no line on the meter stick for 1/3rd of a meter...
Wiki has a beautiful chart relating the olde-tymie english units like inches, barleycorns, and furlongs. These units were developed ad-hoc by people living in every kind of society from industrial stretching back to the paleolithic. And yet, they are remarkably coherent--once you notice it. What is striking is how often the factors of 2 and 3 are involved in converting one unit into another; e.g., three barleycorns is an inch, 6 picas is an inch, 3 feet is a yard, etc.
Metric calculations are ostensibly easier because we use base-10. If we used, say, base-6 or base-12, metric calculations would be as difficult to do in our heads as the English units are. But all those ancient English units would super-easy, because its super-easy to multiply or divide by 2 or 3 in base-6 or base-12.
You can see this most clearly, ironically, in nations like, say, Japan, who have adopted the metric system the most throughly. There, they never use decimeters, or even centimeters. Every measurement is given in millimeters, and you tend to find lengths like 24 and 48 millimeters to be especially previlent--because they both have lots of factors of 2 and 3, making it easy to divide lengths into the most common ratios which are actually used.
Its why eggs are sold by the dozen and beer comes in 6-packs.
Sure, they use millimeters....but this is an unfortunate workaround for a defect of the metric system. The proof is that if you look at the number of millimeters in the specified length, more often than not its something like 1,200 millimeters, viz, a number which is really big and divisible by 3.
I like that using imperial you have a hierarchy of measures: wholes, halves, quarters, eights, sixteenths. It's clear and precise. You know that if you needing to measure 16ths or 32ths things are getting weird.
With metric you have similar measures but the hierarchy isn't strongly defined: 100s of mm, 10s of mm, then maybe 5s of mm, and 2s of mms.
As far as dividing a meter into equal thirds, you wouldn't use a ruler to do that, or at least I wouldn't.
I like that you can fairly easily use the metric system to measure something that was that was made with imperial measures. You can't really say the same for the opposite without a bunch of estimates and holding unmemorable numbers.
What I do wonder is whether there is beauty in the ratios you naturally get from using imperial measures when furniture making or designing building façades.
I sure have seen some beautiful homes made with either system, however!
I'd definitely use a ruler in many cases, and I'm curious about your method. How'd you divide a meter into equal thirds?
Normally I would take measurements from my pre-existing pieces instead of the ruler. It's more accurate because it accommodates for any slight inaccuracies.
Sure, in any base, in any system of units, there will be ratios you need to resort to sig-figs, etc to represent. But that is not an advantage of metric--it a common disadvantage to everybody.
What makes it particularly pressing is that 1/3rd is actually a very common ratio. As far as I know, the metric system is the first and only system which does not let you easily divide your unit of length into thirds. A yard is 3 feet. A cubit is 3 shaftments. And inch is 3 barleycorns. Anybody with three kids and a yard-long string of licorice appreciates the fact that there are marks on the yardstick letting you quickly, easily, and fairly divide the candy, before the kids go berserk waiting for you to tally up how many digits you need.
(Yeah, problems factoring 3s is a deficiency in Base-10 but Base-10 more often than not is "good enough" in practice.)
I grew up in Australia using the metric system. As a child, it was (and probably still is) common to throw around estimates in inches or yards, but anything precise was expressed in in mm or meters. So I've always had a sense of how big and inch or two is but like the presenter, for anything bigger I'd need to perform a quick conversions back to my natural metric measurements to understand what was meant.
I'm also a woodworker and use many vintage tools, produced before the world adopted metric. I decided long ago that I would these tools as they were designed to be used and not try to mess with metric, too.
At the time, I had no intuition at all about fractions of an inch. I didn't even know that 8ths and 16ths where how they were divided. I literally had no idea. I needed to pull out my maths brain to tell you whether 7/8 or 5/16 was bigger.
I used imperial measurements almost exclusively while woodworking in my shed. This was possible because I don't need to communicate measures to anyone other than myself. I also don't often need to take measurements of odd things that don't fall nicely onto an imperial ruler.
I'm now comfortable using inches for measuring things up to maybe 100" — I wonder if 100 is only an obvious stopping point because of my metric upbringing — I still have no concept of a mile or yard before converting to metric.
But I do still do use metric when I need a precise measure of something that can't be expressed easily in inches. So I'd use 12" rather than 304mm, but I'd use 300mm rather than 11 and whatever inches.
Also, it's made easier due to a lot of hangover in stock wood dimensions. It still comes in thicknesses that are more naturally expressed in inches, for example 19mm (3/4"), 25mm (1").
I've been working this way for about 10 years and can now think in inches without any conversion. I doubt I could flip all units of measure to imperial without changing the world I live in and the people I work with.
It's not like you can't do any of this with the metric system, but you'll either need to measure things more, or round things. Often rounding is fine, but to me it feels like a compromise that is born out of the measuring system; a compromise that isn't needed when using the imperial system.
"Dividing it by two gives you 3/8 rather than 9.5mm." - so? What's wrong with 9.5 mm? And what's going to happen when you divide by three, not two?
"It's not like you can't do any of this with the metric system, but you'll either need to measure things more, or round things." - won't you need to round things in any positional system when you divide in not a divider of the base of the system - that is, in imperial system the base is 2, and you have convenient halfs, quarters, eights... and in metric the base is 10 and it's convenient to divide by 2, 5 and all combinations of 2s and 5s - like 50 or even 125.
In your example, 3/4 is 0.75, and divided by 2 is 0.375, and for quick estimate for what it would be in inches you take an inch as 25 mm and go from it.
Don't see anything natural in one compared to the other.
As a number, well nothing. I'm not saying there are anything wrong with the numbers, I'm saying that with a standard set of imperial or metric tools, you're more likely to find your imperial tools working with with you.
> And what's going to happen when you divide by three, not two?
Well dividing by three will be 1/4". That's another common imperial size. But to answer the point I think you were trying to make, there are sometimes cases where it isn't natural — like dividing 3/4 by 5. In those cases you need to measure or pull out of divider. Your problems don't all disappear when using imperial but I find that more often the perfect dimension happens to be that of a commonly size tool.
> Don't see anything natural in one compared to the other.
I think you're arguing from the perspective of pure numbers verses the practicality of making something with tools that I own. If I was using CAD, it metric or imperial would make zero difference.
... when working with imperial, you mean? Or do you mean regardless if you target metric or imperial?
I guess you can use whatever number system you care for.
Thank you for making me think about this.