5 tomatoes
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I wish we had a metric inch because the fuzziness can be useful.
"How small do you need these veggies diced?"
"2.5cm ish" vs. "about an inch"I feel like the implied margin of error is much larger for inches, which make them useful for many things where precision isn't necessarily desirable (hemming, wargaming, moving furniture, etc..). If I'm wargaming having a limit on rounding is useful (half an inch - either round up or down), assuming I'm playing at a scale that uses inches.
Feet I have no use for, with one exception - adult human height between 5' 2" and 6' 2". There I find metric too precise (whereas to the nearest inch accounts for variance in sole thickness, hair volume, etc.).
I wasn't raised on imperial (and I'm baffled that people younger than me in the UK still talk about stones. Sixteen stone is fat, sure, but I've no idea how fat if not told in kilos) but I find inches to have their uses.
Also miles for cars - because common speeds are ~60 and ~30 mph so a road sign effectively gives the time to arrival (e.g. 13 miles on a motorway = about 13 minutes). I don't use them for actually measuring distance on a map but they're handy when driving.
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Is kibimeter a technically allowed measurement? That would be fun!
Can anyone say it isn't? You're using a valid prefix, so people will understand what you're saying, if they have no idea in hell why you're measuring out 1024 meters.
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Somewhat related, but I have the worst time trying to convert numbers in my head from long scale in Japan (used to be used in the UK as well) to how it's used in the current English speaking world. So basically they put four zeros per comma as opposed to three, and the names of the numbers reflect that. 1, 10, 100, 1000, and 10000 are all unique number names, but after that comes 10 ten thousands, 100 ten thousands, and then 1000 ten thousands before a new number name at 1,0000,0000 (or 100,000,000).
It wouldn't be so bad to just memorize that 100 thousand is "new number name" if that's all it was, but numbers like that in daily life are pretty much used to talk about money (or somewhat less commonly populations). So once I get the actual number I have to divide by about 100 (or 150, depending on the strength of the yen vs dollar) to think about what it actually means in units I'm used to, like seeing an article saying a government project costs 1.2 billion yen doesn't mean much until I think about it like 12 (or
million USD instead. So I can never really use big numbers in conversation without manually counting zeros in my head.It helps to memorize million and billion both ways since those are what you'll be using most, and are good signposts.
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Car mileage (or kilometerage, is that a word?)
People don't say the car has 200 megameter on the odometer, but 200 000 km. Or 200k km?...
In Sweden we say 20 000 mil. I always have to stop for a second to convert when people use km.
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I wish we had a metric inch because the fuzziness can be useful.
"How small do you need these veggies diced?"
"2.5cm ish" vs. "about an inch"I feel like the implied margin of error is much larger for inches, which make them useful for many things where precision isn't necessarily desirable (hemming, wargaming, moving furniture, etc..). If I'm wargaming having a limit on rounding is useful (half an inch - either round up or down), assuming I'm playing at a scale that uses inches.
Feet I have no use for, with one exception - adult human height between 5' 2" and 6' 2". There I find metric too precise (whereas to the nearest inch accounts for variance in sole thickness, hair volume, etc.).
I wasn't raised on imperial (and I'm baffled that people younger than me in the UK still talk about stones. Sixteen stone is fat, sure, but I've no idea how fat if not told in kilos) but I find inches to have their uses.
Also miles for cars - because common speeds are ~60 and ~30 mph so a road sign effectively gives the time to arrival (e.g. 13 miles on a motorway = about 13 minutes). I don't use them for actually measuring distance on a map but they're handy when driving.
Why not say ‘2-3 cm’ for the first one? Or ‘a couple centimeters’? It doesn’t feel too different from saying ‘about an inch’ to me
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It helps to memorize million and billion both ways since those are what you'll be using most, and are good signposts.
Yeah I'm sure it's not as difficult as I'm making it out to be but it never seems to stick. It's just as simple as 2 numbers: "million = 100 ten thousands" (hyaku-man) and "billion = 10 hundred millions" (juu-oku).
Let's just say there a lot of frustrations I have with the language even after decades of studying.
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Yeah I'm sure it's not as difficult as I'm making it out to be but it never seems to stick. It's just as simple as 2 numbers: "million = 100 ten thousands" (hyaku-man) and "billion = 10 hundred millions" (juu-oku).
Let's just say there a lot of frustrations I have with the language even after decades of studying.
wrote last edited by [email protected]Maybe think in numbers if you're more inclined to think like that? 10 million is 7 zeroes, in base-3 means the you "buy" the 6 zero unit and you got one (10) left; In base-4 you "buy" the 4 zero unit and you get 3 (1000) left.
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Fair, but I lived in Denver for 26 years. I will never forget the number of feet in a mile.
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The only metric to imperial conversion I remember is kilometers to miles since it's pretty close to the golden ratio.
Even if you don't remember that the golden ratio is 1.6 and a bit, you can approximate it by using successive terms of the Fibonacci sequence.
1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13 ...
So 8 miles is about 13km (actually 12.87)
Forma me it's the yard. It's so close to the meter its ridiculous. I just ignore the difference an treat as the same. One yard = 0.9144 meters
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Why not say ‘2-3 cm’ for the first one? Or ‘a couple centimeters’? It doesn’t feel too different from saying ‘about an inch’ to me
Taking it even further who the fuck uses inches or cms for vegetable cutting measurements anyway, it's like, one or two fingers thick
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Imagine being so close minded and bad at math that you can only think in base 10 and feel the constant need to degrade people who are good at math in different bases
What a weak argument. You shouldn’t have to be good at math to do basic calculations in daily life. Metric is much more accessible in this regard. Even if you lack math skills it is easy to understand.
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Imagine being so close minded and bad at math that you can only think in base 10 and feel the constant need to degrade people who are good at math in different bases
The feet to mile conversion is still in base-10... Its the ratios between the units that are seemingly arbitrary. Come on...
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The feet to mile conversion is still in base-10... Its the ratios between the units that are seemingly arbitrary. Come on...
This comment brought to you by a complete and fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to use a different base numeral
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Fair, but I lived in Denver for 26 years. I will never forget the number of feet in a mile.
Heeey, I’m currently living in Northglenn. Same, it’s forever etched in my memory.
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This comment brought to you by a complete and fundamental misunderstanding of what it means to use a different base numeral
You dont write the number of feet in a mile as 14A0 (base-16 for this example).
Your complaining about ratios used for unit conversion, not base numeral systems... Fuck, this feels like a slashdot comment.
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What a weak argument. You shouldn’t have to be good at math to do basic calculations in daily life. Metric is much more accessible in this regard. Even if you lack math skills it is easy to understand.
Did you read the words I wrote? It looks like youre responding to a "imperial units are better than metric" strawman which you may notice I didnt say or even allude to
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Most standard measuring tapes have 1/16th of an inch as the smallest fraction on the tape. 1mm is 1/32nd Which is one is "close enough"? Lol
Edit: 1/32, not 1/64
Way off! There are 25.4 millimeters per inch, not 64, and most measuring tapes have 1/32" markings.
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You dont write the number of feet in a mile as 14A0 (base-16 for this example).
Your complaining about ratios used for unit conversion, not base numeral systems... Fuck, this feels like a slashdot comment.
You count up in incremental numbers until you reach 5280 and then finally increment from 0 to 1 miles. That's base 5280. Just because we didnt invent more symbols to easily represent that does not mean its not a different numeric base.
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Way off! There are 25.4 millimeters per inch, not 64, and most measuring tapes have 1/32" markings.
Haven't had my coffee, you're right it's closer to 1/32.
Most measuring tapes in US don't go smaller than a 1/16th though.
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Is kibimeter a technically allowed measurement? That would be fun!
Yes, the same way that kiloinches is technically allowed.
