Do you think in metric?
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BBC News story[^]. I'm a bit of a mixed bag on this, like so much of my life (e.g. In cricket I bowl left-handed but bat right-handed). I tend to purchase in imperial but when cooking something such as a cake I work in metric units. I suspect that younger members, at least, would be mostly, if not entirely, metric. Except, of course, for the good old Pint of Pig's.
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” I wouldn't let CG touch my Abacus! When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is.
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Even the BBC weather forecasters quote Celsius and often (as an afterthought) quote it in Fahrenheit as well. Imperial is a horrible system. Why the UK still retains it is a mystery.
(UK-centric answer) When they were introducing Decimalisation (for money) back in 1971, many elderly people were complaining and saying that they ought to wait until the old ones have died out. There is a slight flaw in that argument; and it is not that the decimalisation of GB was started in the reign of Queen Victoria (she introduced the florin (2 shillings) which was 1/10th of a pound). There was a ad campaign (again in the 1970s) to prepare us for decimalisation, but 4.0 decades (metric) / 0.4 centuries (metric) / 40 years (imperial) later, we are still waiting. The only slogan from that period that I can recall is " A litre of water's a pint and three quarters". I still think in Imperial for virtually everything except distance, where Astronomical Units, parsecs and light years are better units (except that the AU is changing over the years and the parsec is based on it). Even the speed of light is somehow easier to remember in Imperial (186282 miles per second / ~ 6 million million miles per year / 1 foot per nanosecond) than in metric (~300000 km per sec (if I've got the correct no of zeros)). I noticed that wood now tends to be sold in 1.80m lengths (metric 6 foot) and you can still buy milk in 568ml cartons (metric 1 pint). And don't get us into the 'what is a billion' debate.
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BBC News story[^]. I'm a bit of a mixed bag on this, like so much of my life (e.g. In cricket I bowl left-handed but bat right-handed). I tend to purchase in imperial but when cooking something such as a cake I work in metric units. I suspect that younger members, at least, would be mostly, if not entirely, metric. Except, of course, for the good old Pint of Pig's.
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” I wouldn't let CG touch my Abacus! When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is.
My 21-year-old son uses imperial for cooking; I'm not sure about what he uses for anything else. I'm happy with inches or centimeters but definitely prefer miles to kilometers. I prefer Celsius to Fahrenheit. I prefer ounces to grams, I'm happy with pounds or kilograms until it gets into the range where I can use stones. Mind you, I work in aviation, where we measure height in feet and visibility in meters...
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BBC News story[^]. I'm a bit of a mixed bag on this, like so much of my life (e.g. In cricket I bowl left-handed but bat right-handed). I tend to purchase in imperial but when cooking something such as a cake I work in metric units. I suspect that younger members, at least, would be mostly, if not entirely, metric. Except, of course, for the good old Pint of Pig's.
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” I wouldn't let CG touch my Abacus! When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is.
As a Canadian whom can see the US from my front doorstep (live in Windsor Ontario, can see Detroit Downtown), I am a hybrid on the issue. Temperature is metric, I still at 28 years old I can't grasp Fahrenheit. In regards to golf, it's all yards. When I was in South Africa golfing, the markers were in meters, and between that and not being able to do the yard / meter conversion on the fly, was one of the worst rounds of my life! When cooking, it's mostly imperial (recipes from passed down from grandparents and even my parents are all imperial based), mind you my measuring set has both imperial / metric on them, so I can switch up easily when dealing with something I found online). Distance is all in KM (when I am driving across the border, I use my GPS in KM as my distance guide, and only use road signs to ensure that i am in the right place). Weight and Height wise, all imperial (I don't know my weight in KGs or height in meters!). When I am doing work around the house, it's all imperial too (never measure in metric). Talking about paper and printing sizes, all imperial too (was taken back when had to buy paper overseas, asking for an 8 1/2 by 11 sheet, and having the store clerk look at me like I just landed on the planet!)
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BBC News story[^]. I'm a bit of a mixed bag on this, like so much of my life (e.g. In cricket I bowl left-handed but bat right-handed). I tend to purchase in imperial but when cooking something such as a cake I work in metric units. I suspect that younger members, at least, would be mostly, if not entirely, metric. Except, of course, for the good old Pint of Pig's.
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” I wouldn't let CG touch my Abacus! When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is.
When a was a wee sprout (50 years ago) we were taught that the U.S. was going to go metric so we'd better learn it. All the businesses screamed it was too costly to convert (and got more expensive by the minute) and so we didn't. The six pack for lunch crowd I unfortunately went to school with, didn't see the need to convert either. It hurt their brains enough just to do simple arithmetic (like how to make change without the cash register telling you how). At best the medical profession has moved to it and the carbonated drink companies split the difference (12 oz cans, but 1 liter bottles). But metric does make my penis size impressive.
Psychosis at 10 Film at 11 Those who do not remember the past, are doomed to repeat it. Those who do not remember the past, cannot build upon it.
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I know how much I weigh in stone, how tall I am in feet and inches, my allotment is 50 foot by 20 foot, the beds I marked out are 9 foot by 4 or 5 foot. I drive in miles per hour (obviously), I drink pints, I buy milk by the litre (or 2), and sugar by the kilo - but that is because that is how they are packaged. I think I estimate distance mentally in yards, feet and inches. I can switch between the two quite happily though, most things you by these days are metric, although many are both. When cooking I don't measure anything, I use an amount that I need, calculated visually with no thought to its quantity or units.
Henry Minute wrote:
I suspect that younger members,
I'm 37, when the hell did that happen, guess I'm not a younger member.
Every man can tell how many goats or sheep he possesses, but not how many friends.
ChrisElston wrote:
I'm 37, when the hell did that happen, guess I'm not a younger member.
As Basil Fawlty said: Zoom! What was that? That was your life, Mate! That was quick, do I get another? Sorry, Mate. Back to the world of dreams... I'm 41, and I also don't know what the hell happened. Where did all those years go? To the bottom of a litre glass? Hmmm...doesn't sound right. It does sound better saying a 'pint' glass. :beer: I actually think a lot in metric, which is rare in the US, but it's mostly because I have a very international family...and engineering classes at the University also helped.
The world is going to laugh at you anyway, might as well crack the 1st joke! My code has no bugs, it runs exactly as it was written.
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I obviously think in metric (I'm Italian), but funnily I often find myself thinking in English (it's not my mother language).
If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe, but not a personality. [Charlie Brooker] ScrewTurn Wiki, Software Localization Tools & Services and My Blog
Same thing here.. I think it's quite a "common" thing in developers maybe, as we tend to use English quite often in our job..
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BBC News story[^]. I'm a bit of a mixed bag on this, like so much of my life (e.g. In cricket I bowl left-handed but bat right-handed). I tend to purchase in imperial but when cooking something such as a cake I work in metric units. I suspect that younger members, at least, would be mostly, if not entirely, metric. Except, of course, for the good old Pint of Pig's.
Henry Minute Do not read medical books! You could die of a misprint. - Mark Twain Girl: (staring) "Why do you need an icy cucumber?" “I want to report a fraud. The government is lying to us all.” I wouldn't let CG touch my Abacus! When you're wrestling a gorilla, you don't stop when you're tired, you stop when the gorilla is.
do pepole REALLY still use old-fashioned, uncommon and limited systems such as imperial or metric? the ONLY appropriate set of units is FFF (Furlong/Firkin/Fortnight)
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Even the BBC weather forecasters quote Celsius and often (as an afterthought) quote it in Fahrenheit as well. Imperial is a horrible system. Why the UK still retains it is a mystery.
Because it's as useful as metric, but for complementary purposes. Let me address metric first. Its usefulness is consistancy and mathematical utility. Every measurement has ONE base unit, which we then scale by factors of ten, right? Couldn't be simpler. Using this system in mathematical calculations is easy. So this system wins out in any endeavour of pencil-and-paper. Except it isn't applied consistantly. What appears at first to be a simple base-10 scalcing system is, by tradition, not. We use the mm, cm, m, and km. We exclude and decimeter, dekameter, and hectometer so thoroughly that we have to speak in stilited language of 600m rather than 6hm or 30cm rather then 3 dm. So the system does not live up to its billing as base-10. Instead it is an ad-hoc mix of base-1000, base-100 and base-10. But base-10 is an accident of biology. There may be considerations beyond mathematical utility in choosing units of measure. The imperial system shines in the realm of day to day life. Is it not easier to estimate the relative size of a foot to a yard than a decimeter to a meter? I find mentally estimating a tenth of a distance or weight (or whatever measurement) less accurate than estimating a third or a half of the same unit. Dividing the foot: The consideration here is divisibility. There is an elegance and a clarity of expression when we can stay in the realm of whole numbers for describing a fraction of one measure and a multiple of another. 12 inches to a foot allows the foot to be equally divided in 2, 3, 4, and 6 parts of integral inches. 1/3 foot == 4 inches. 1/2 foot == 6 inches. But 1/3 meter = 3 1/3 dm. 1/4 m == 2.5 dm. Hmm. This concept is so useful that the Babylonian base-60 still prevails when measuring time and angles. I have yet to see a protractor with a radian scale. Dividing miles and inches: We in the software field should also appreciate the imperial tradition of dividing miles and inches in binary! What could be more fundamental? We generally divide the mile into halves and quarters, but then give up and 'go decimal' for smaller divisions, but the inch is given the binary treatment through to 1/64 (beyond that we use mils). Temperature: Dividing the temperature-difference between freezing water and boiling water into 100 units is worse than dividing it into 180 units. The methematical utility of base-10 is comprimized by the choice of TWO arbitrary points. On the other hand, the F scale has nearly twice the granularity of C. I
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PHS241 wrote:
Why the UK still retains it is a mystery.
We grew up with it; we are familiar with it; most of us are happy with it and don't want to use metric exclusively in our daily lives. Why should we be forced to change?
Same thinking here in the US, only there is a bigger force to move. Some places tried posting distances on the highways in both metric km and imperial miles. Don't see those much anymore. Some cars have show speed in both mph and kph. Hospitals are embracing metric much more than in the last century. They use kilograms and grams for weight measurements, ml and l for volumes, and cm for height. Since I spent my education years studying the sciences, I prefer the metric system. But, I am sure that if gas changes from gallons to litres, the price will go up. (Any changes and the gas companies will find a reason to raise prices.)