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Comment by remarkEon | Hacker News Reader

The old system is useful for very common things like cooking, because it's a Duodecimal system and you can more easily do fractions in your head. I get it it's funny "the Americans don't like science", but it's actually pretty far from the truth.

I have a habit of measuring ground distance in meters, for example, because I was in the (US) Army and yes we measured those things in meters/kilometers. But other things are not measured like that.

Measuring systems are only useful if they are, well, easy. And some systems are more easy in certain circumstances than others. Which is to say, it's easy to get used to a meter being a pace (tie a meter long string to your ankles).

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> The old system is useful for very common things like cooking, because it's a Duodecimal system and you can more easily do fractions in your head. I get it it's funny "the Americans don't like science", but it's actually pretty far from the truth.

It's really not. Most of the time, I just convert to grams and use a scale so I can get an actually accurate input quantity. I don't want to think about "heaping" and "leveled" and "packed" and different densities, humidity or uneven distribution within a measuring implement. If I'm going to be putting it on a scale I'm definitely not setting it to ounces.

I think the difference it that I don't have to use a scale. I'm not in a chemistry lab, I'm in my kitchen. Though, I suppose, those are one in the same aren't they.

Unless you're baking, in which case a scale really makes a world of difference!

When was the last time you really looked and said, geez, thank the lord I can divide 1lb 14oz into eights really easily in my head?

I'm very very particular about measuring out the exact amount a recipe calls for and putting it all in little dishes before we actually start cooking. But I don't actually have a scale, maybe I'll get one and try it. My wife will probably stop me, because once I get into the details on a particular topic I tend to go overboard.

On the math thing, probably during Christmas when we were trying to stretch a baked French Toast recipe to feed 9 people in stead of 6. Worked great.

Haha, honestly I don't have much of a real opinion on this topic. I do suggest the scale, though. I find I get much more consistent results. Even if it's set to ounces ;) The error bars on "one cup of flour" IME are enormous.

This is making me realize that the error bars really live in the kitchen of the recipe maker.

My french toast is ruined! I measured the exact amount you said! Not realizing that the original cook was using the Larry David measurement system. "Ehhh that's close enough".

Honestly, I hadn't though about that, heh. I'm sure you're right.

In a tangential but related topic, you can improve floating point arithmetic precision by varying bases :)

“A pint’s a pound the world around”

The metric system is pretty good at that: 1 ml H2O = 1 cm^3 = 1 g, and 1 calorie will increase its temperature 1 deg C (assuming 1 atmosphere pressure, and a certain water temperature).

Anyone have a rhyme for it?

Sounds great, until you add pretty much anything to the water.

Same with pints and pounds.

My favorite part about the metric system is that the weight of 1 kilo is the same as 1 liter of H2O. This was extremely useful for me in a past life.

You hit! From my experience, metric system is best for pharmaceutical calculations, like "how many water need to got 40% alcohol", and it's also extremely important for taste, as in many cases better 38%.

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