90 ms·

I'd part with cups and teaspoons/tablespoons and the like, but you'll pry inches/feet/yards and fahrenheit from my cold, dead hands. They're both more convenien

I'd part with cups and teaspoons/tablespoons and the like, but you'll pry inches/feet/yards and fahrenheit from my cold, dead hands. They're both more convenient for daily use. I think I'd prefer to keep miles as well but I don't have a good reason for that one. Fahrenheit has more precision without using decimals for the thing 99% of people are using temperature measurements for: air temp. Where I live, we generally experience 5 degrees F - 100 degrees F at different points of the year. That's 95 degrees of precision with no decimal. In C, that's -15 to 37.8, a mere 52.8 degrees. The difference between 75 (usually a beautiful day) and 85 (hot) is 23.8C to 29.4C. Everything packed into this tight range. Inches/feet being base 12 divides better into thirds and fourths, which is very useful in construction. For science, sure, I'll use metric.

Tor3 8mo ago
What's the problem with decimals? They're all numbers. -4.5 degrees C is fine, isn't it? (The actual temperature right here right now). Where's the problem?
- gonzalohm 8mo ago
  You don't even need decimals. 45x10^-1. There, fixed
- sfn42 8mo ago
  You don't even need decimals. Nobody who uses celsius gives a shit about the decimals. It's -4 or it's -5 and even that distinction is irrelevant. Unless you're doing some kind of scientific calculaton there's no need to think about decimals of celsius at all. Just like Fahrenheit users surely don't care whether it's 50 or 53 or whatever. It's around 50, that's all you need to know.
  - Ekaros 8mo ago
    Only place I could imagine something is cooking and even there I probably would not be able to differentiate steak at 56C, 57C and 58C...
    - ginko 8mo ago
      It might make a difference for mashing when brewing beer but even that’s a crapshoot.
      - Kim_Bruning 8mo ago
        Yes, but then you might conceivably still measure temperature in degrees Réaumur, if it's a rather traditional brewer. Or so I was told by a Reliable Source(tm).
    - ghaff 8mo ago
      For sous vide, I will differentiate by 1 or 2 Fahrenheit degrees but I take your basic point.
jlongman 8mo ago
That’s funny because when I work with Fahrenheit I just work with 5°F ranges to compensate for the approximate mental math required. Eg very quick mentally, 100°F = 37.778 °C (thanks autocorrect) = (100-32)/2 = 34. But if it was closer to freezing say 42°F =5.556 °C (again) so 5°C. So arbitrarily we could say 57°F was 12°C =53.6 °F actually. But a true Canuck knows knowing the temp is barely half the battle, what’s the wind speed and humidity? 29°C can be a lovely day if it’s dry or completely unbearable if it’s humid. We hardly ever use decimals for weather-related measurements, the other factors above being more relevant. Contrast that with measurements where I would say if you need to know a precise one you should be using decimal; ie what do you do if it doesn’t precisely third or fourth? If you’re talking about tool sizes then any system works as long as your froodle matches the grommlet.
- candiddevmike 8mo ago
  (F - 30) / 2 = ~C C * 2 + 30 = ~F
  - SECProto 8mo ago
    No need to simplify this. (F - 32) / 1.8 = C C * 1.8 + 32 = F I personally find the math just as easy to do accurately. For example, 87F -32/1.8 = 55/1.8 =~30.5C. Compare that to your approximate method, which would give 28.5C, which is just wrong (Maybe I just got really good at this when working a public facing job with a lot of American tourists - they would ask what our celsius temperatures were "in real units", so I got quite comfortable converting the air and water temps. Fahrenheit never once became intuitive to me, though.)
    - tzs 8mo ago
      For C to F you can often simplify the mental math by doing the multiply by doubling then taking off 10%. E.g., to convert 31℃ to ℉: 31 x 2 = 62. Subtract 6.2 = 55.8. Add 32 = 87.8℉. If you want to round the result to the nearest integer the subtract 10% step is a convenient place: 31 x 2 = 62. Subtract 6 (rounded 6.2) = 56. Add 32 = 88℉.
modo_mario 8mo ago
>Everything packed into this tight range. AS someone that grew up with metric that feels fairly natural and not tight at all? >Inches/feet being base 12 divides better into thirds and fourths, which is very useful in construction. I used ruler tapes with both metric and imperial on either side and i always wondered how one could use the inches since they're so big and didn't always have the same minute subdivisions. Also doing my math in decimals seemed easier than calculating with quarter or 1/8th inches or smaller. >For science, sure, I'll use metric. Surely it would feel more natural to use the same for everything and all measurements. I want to know how much rainwater my IBC roughly holds. I take out my measuring tape real quick. I'm not even sure how I'd get started in imperial without some strong intuition build up over years?
- svara 8mo ago
  > (...) grew up with (...) feels fairly natural (...) Really all there is to that discussion.
  - modo_mario 8mo ago
    Mostly yeah at which point the only relevant arguments are being able to tie in with the rest of the world and being able to easily tie measurements togheter/do math.
- threemux 8mo ago
  I mean it's mathematically a tighter range. I think part of this comes down to the more mild and less variable European climate. There is just less emphasis on air temperature so you don't see the drawbacks. Your tape measure didn't have 1/3, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, and 1/32 subdivisions? Sounds like a bad tape measure (or really just one where US Customary was an afterthought). As for science, well, most people don't do it. Those that do can use different things in different contexts, it's not that hard.
  - modo_mario 8mo ago
    >Your tape measure didn't have 1/3, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, and 1/32 subdivisions? I think one of em did and the other didn't. Either way it seems far more difficult to do some math with.
flohofwoe 8mo ago
> They're both more convenient for daily use. That's really just because you're used to it. The rest is rationalization... OTH of course the rest of the world can hardly complain since we didn't switch time or (angle-)degrees to decimal either ;)
- etiennebausson 8mo ago
  Not switching to metric for time is reasonable, because there are already two existing 'natural' units for time (the day and the year), and they don't align on each other in metric (a year of exactly 1000 days would be so much easier, but we'll have to deal with reality as it is... or accelerate the rotation speed of the planet I suppose). So long as we live on earth, metric time won't make much sense.
  - amanaplanacanal 8mo ago
    A year and a day don't line up at all, so we get weird leap days.
    - sowbug 8mo ago
      Is there any reason they should? Unless the Earth were tidally locked to the Sun, I'm not aware of any reason a day would have any relationship to a year.
      - samus 8mo ago
        It would be convenient to not having to deal with leap days and other such constructs. Of course, we cannot choose how these things behave, and therefore using a calendar not aligned to the natural cycles of our planet would be even less convenient, and would only start making sense when humanity develops into an interplanetary civilization.
  - IAmBroom 8mo ago
    The US isn't on a 365.24-based system, either. Days don't fit neatly into years, anyway. That would have no impact on decimalizing sub-day units: 10 decidays in a day, 2 millidays to cook an egg... But no country did it, which speaks to the power our time traditions really hold in our psyche.
Kim_Bruning 8mo ago
An eyeballed yard is roughly the same as an eyeballed meter. An eyeballed foot is 1/3 of that. You can stick 4 inches in 10 cm roughly. And I just poke my nose out the window and look outside to see what the temperature is Freezing.... ~30°F.... ~0°C Need coat... ~50°F... ~10°C T-shirt..... ~70°F... ~20°C Melting..... ~90°F... ~30°C Rules of thumb can be learned either direction! ps HN tables are not really a thing, are they? pps Suspiciously many experiments are conducted at 293K
- cucumber3732842 8mo ago
  What you're ignoring is that a hundred plus or minus is a good range for average humans to grapple with and Fahrenheit splits the temperature swings in a given region across an approximately 100deg range. So using Fahrenheit results in a pretty decent "as high as it can be without being clumsy" measurement system that covers just about all earthly temperatures. If we only cared about increments of five or so degrees you could go higher resolution and it'd be fine because rounding would occur like we do with vehicle speeds. Or we could go lower resolution and just make the degrees bigger, which is basically what celsius is.
  - Kim_Bruning 8mo ago
    Eh, all the degrees (Celsius, Fahrenheit, Réaumur, etc) are all about equally bad. Nicest thing that can be said about Celsius is that it's decimal, connected to water (0=freezing, 100=boiling) so it plays well with the rest of metric. Kelvin is actually the most practical of the lot, FSVO [1]. It's not a 'degree', because it's anchored at absolute zero. It's just a bit unwieldy for our day-to-day, with room temperature at 293K. But I can imagine if people were to grow up with it, it wouldn't be too bad even then. [1] eg. "Why can an aircon still heat the house at ten degrees below zero?"- "Well akshually, you still have 263K of heat energy to pump, not an actual problem"
    - samus 8mo ago
      Right, we are just arguing which is the most practical range. It's like choosing a calendar: we could define one using entirely metric time units, but nobody would want to use it as long as human civilization is anchored on Planet Earth.
gonzalohm 8mo ago
Interesting. As an European living in the US. The only US units that I find useful are cups, teaspoons and tablespoons. And that's only for cooking. It's way faster to measure volume than weight (although less accurate)
- kakacik 8mo ago
  Those are not US measures, we use them in Europe as well
  - justincormack 8mo ago
    They are different sizes to the American ones.
  - gonzalohm 8mo ago
    Really? I have never seen them in use in Spain
  - rkomorn 8mo ago
    I've not seen them used as precise measurements in France or Portugal. In the US, you buy measuring spoons that have specific sizes (1tbsp is 1/2oz, and 1tsp is 1/3tbsp).
- consp 8mo ago
  It used to be based on relative size, so if you have a set of spoons and cups and use the same for all measurements they are ballpark right for your recipe (and some minor difference accounting for user error). These day's it's defined anyway in both metric and imperial. As soon as you start weighing something from the recipe it goes out of the window as that defines the rest of the relative measurements. For that reason I really dislike the recipes telling you to measure teaspoons of spices but grams or ounces of flour. I don't have two sets of measurement cups available. These days most cooking sites mention both though. On a sidenote: an ounce is 100g here and a pound 500g. Mainly by being in common usage and translated to common used weights. "An ounce more okay?" is an easy way to sell more without mentioning how much it actually is in numbers.
jeppester 8mo ago
I like this! I wonder if there's a place on the internet where I can find more of this sort of seemingly strong and well-thought out arguments for something that is so clearly subjective (if not just inferior).
- cucumber3732842 8mo ago
  >seemingly strong and well-thought out arguments for something that is so clearly subjective Any platform where snooty articulate people congregate will have such arguments by the bushel.
  - hencq 8mo ago
    > by the bushel Well played
- nayuki 8mo ago
  https://www.reddit.com/r/Metric/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Metric/
eddyg 8mo ago
Fahrenheit forever! 0°C.................100°C Cold Dead 0°F.................100°F Really Cold Really Hot
- btbuilder 8mo ago
  0C = Frozen!
  - ghkbrew 8mo ago
    Only if you're made of pure water at standard pressure. Which I'm not.
    - Kim_Bruning 8mo ago
      Close enough for government work, actually. And it's not just flesh. Lots of things behave approximately like water, which is handy for all sorts of back-of-envelope estimates.
    - samus 8mo ago
      You better take precautions against frostbite below that temperature though. And a lot of things need to be watched as they could be frozen then.
- evil-olive 8mo ago
  I see this argument repeated every single time someone tries to defend Fahrenheit. if "room temperature" was smack in the middle, at 50 degF, you might have a point. but no, it's pure post-hoc rationalization. being naked at 0 degF will kill you. being naked at 100 degF will (usually) not. they're not remotely equivalent. instead, think of it this way - human beings are mostly water, and 0 to 100 degC is "percentage of the way from water's freezing point to boiling point". room temperature is "about 20% of the way to boiling". 40% or higher starts to cause our bodies to overheat. a typical sauna will be somewhere between 50 and 70% of the way.
- Polizeiposaune 8mo ago
d--b 8mo ago
Can you at least switch to 1/10th of inches? The 1/4th, 1/8th, 1/16th is very annoying
- convolvatron 8mo ago
  we do. being a machinist in the US means being able to convert between decimal inches, mm, fractional inches, and things like feet all the time. not to mention other completely arbitrary units like sheet gauge, fastener number and inverse thread spacing. there are also decimal feet for carpenters. this for me is the real appeal of metric, not that somehow a meter is magical, but at least there is one system, with a consistent set of rules, that allows us to do some magic things like tell the approximate volume of water given a weight. edit: omg I forgot about nominal wood sizes. the underlying system actually has different units based on the material and the usage. copper gauge is not the same as steel gauge. thats pretty hopeless. for precious metals we also have the pennyweight
  - deleted 8mo ago
    [deleted]
- AngryData 8mo ago
  That would be negating 90% of the usefulness of using a fractional system though. It is barely a step up from using a prime number like 7 or 11 as a number base or divisor.
relaxing 8mo ago
You don’t need to worry about taking up room for a decimal place when your outdoor temperature is only ever 2 digits at most.
gordonhart 8mo ago
Miles didn't click for me until I learned that it's defined by how far you'll travel in 1,000 paces (where a pace is an L+R step). Now I find it very useful to convert steps<>distance traveled, which is actually quite useful if you walk a lot!
- zzzoom 8mo ago
  You'd have to be quite tall to average an ~80cm step. 193cm (6'4") according to a quick search.
  - gordonhart 8mo ago
    The original unit was the [slightly smaller] Roman mile which was standardized with the military in mind, i.e. able-bodied men in their prime. Seems like the average for men today is 2.5 feet or so which is more or less still on the money for 2k steps/1k paces to a mile.
AlotOfReading 8mo ago
Even in construction, feet/inches/yards kinda sucks. 1:10 scale drawings are painful to do manually, division by 2 is a bit erratic, and bolt sizing is a horrible mess. Metric bolts are nice and consistent. With you on temperature though.
- briffle 8mo ago
  My wife was a surveyor in a past carreer. We have a tape measure in the garage that measures to the nearest hundredth of a foot. It is just so weird to see. Forcing decimal on a measurement that does not normally have it just makes me uncomfortable. https://surveysupplyinc.com/lufkin-12-foot-hi-viz-engineers-pocket-tape-engineers-dual-scale-phv1312d/ https://surveysupplyinc.com/lufkin-12-foot-hi-viz-engineers-...
  - nayuki 8mo ago
    The tension that you experienced is common in imperial and traditional systems of units. Here's another example for you: Carpenters working with wood use mixed feet, inches, and fractional inches (like 2' 5 3/8"), but machinists working with metal use exclusively decimal inches (like 29.375"). Both hold steadfast to their traditions and won't consider adopting the other system. If you take a look at American grocery stores, you'll see things like: “40 × 16.9 FL OZ (1.05 PT) 500 mL BOTTLES / NET 676 FL OZ (5.28 GAL) 20 L” https://www.instacart.com/assets/domains/product-image/file/large_a4c1a08d-4d30-4ea3-869b-4060b8fbb951.jpeg https://www.instacart.com/assets/domains/product-image/file/... To dissect that product: It's a pack of 40× 500 mL of bottled water. I have zero problems with the metric labeling. But for the US customary units, you can see a jumble: decimal fluid ounces, decimal pints, a large number of fluid ounces, and decimal gallons. Note that the gallons can be broken down into mixed units (and some packaging does that); 676 fl oz = 5 gal 1 qt (0 pt) (0 cup) 4 fl oz exactly. The US units are basically "whatever I feel like using" (don't forget tsp and tbsp, which aren't used in the current example). The metric units for liquid consumer products are always mL and L, which greatly simplifies learning and comparison for the consumer.
  - zokier 8mo ago
    > My wife was a surveyor in a past carreer. We have a tape measure in the garage that measures to the nearest hundredth of a foot Survey foot or international foot?
TheCoelacanth 8mo ago
The extra precision is fake. They might have measured precisely at the weather station, but local variation in temperature makes that extra precision meaningless unless you are located exactly where the measurement happened. Even in a climate controlled room, there will be a degree or two of variation between different parts of the room.
- evil-olive 8mo ago
  for another example of this: a lot of people "know" that the average human body temperature is 98.6 degF. that extra decimal point gives people false confidence about the measurement being more precise than it is. because so much science (even in the US) happens using the metric system, the actual measured average [0] is 37 degC, and 37.0 degC == 98.6 degF. the nuance of the average being more of a confidence interval (37 +/- 0.5 degC, possibly larger) gets lost as well. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_body_temperature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_body_temperature
rickydroll 8mo ago
If you want to get even more divisive, try converting people to metric baking measurements. Baking bread and cakes is much more repeatable if you use mass rather than volume to measure ingredients. The results from this recipe were never consistent when I used volume measurements. I converted to mass in metric and now I get consistent results. adapted from: [https://www.justsotasty.com/wprm_print/11594 https://www.justsotasty.com/wprm_print/11594](https://www.justsotasty.com/wprm_print/11594 https://www.justsotasty.com/wprm_print/11594) Banana Brownies Prep Time: 15 minutes mins Cook Time: 35 minutes mins Total Time: 50 minutes mins ### Equipment - 9x13 inch (23 x 33 cm) baking pan* ### Ingredients - 227 g unsalted butter (2 US sticks) unsalted butter (The better the butter, the better the results. In the U.S. market, Kerrygold yields the best results, followed by Cabot, and "well, it's still brownies" Market Basket house brand.) - 400 g dark brown sugar - 2 large eggs - 5-10 ml vanilla extract - 150 g mashed bananas (about 2-3 large, brown bananas) - 156 g all-purpose flour (I prefer King Arthur All Purpose Unbleached Flour) - 60-70 g cocoa powder - 2-3g teaspoon salt - 280(ish) g chocolate chips (I prefer Ghirardelli Bittersweet 60% Cacao Baking Chips, use 1 bag) ) ### Instructions - Preheat the oven to 350F degrees (180C or 170C fan forced). Line a 9x13 inch (23x33 cm) pan with parchment paper or aluminum foil leaving an overhang around the sides. Alternatively, lightly grease the pan. - Melt the butter in a double boiler. Add in the brown sugar, stir, and let it sit in the double boiler, stirring occasionally until the mixture has a nice caramelly flavor. - While the butter-sugar mixture is cooking in the double boiler, combine the dry ingredients. - Sometimes cocoa powder is lumpy, and you may need to sift it. The alternative I use is combined flour, cocoa powder, and salt, and use a whisk to mix it all together and break up any lumps if there are any. - Take the brown sugar butter mixture off of the double boiler and mix in the mashed bananas and vanilla. - The bananas usually cool the mixture enough that the eggs won't cook when you put them in, but if the mixture is hot, add some flour, add some of the dry ingredients, and that will cool it down enough to add the eggs safely. - Stir in the chocolate chips. - Pour/spoon the batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 35 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean or with a few damp crumbs. - Cool fully (about 4 hours), then slice. Store brownies in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 4 days. (Never last that long in my house)
- bigstrat2003 8mo ago
childintime 8mo ago
Nobody I know speaks of temperatures in decimals of Celsius, like no one.
humodz 8mo ago
> The difference between 75 (usually a beautiful day) and 85 (hot) is 23.8C to 29.4C. If you convert a nice, round number from one system to the other, you'll end up with a more precise, less nice number, which will give the impression that Celsius is harder to use. In reality, people from metric countries just think in 5-degree increments: 25 is a beautiful day, 30 is hot. It doesn't feel any harder to read than Fahrenheit. I wonder if there are people that moved to the U.S., switched to Fahrenheit and now find it more intuitive than Celsius. If one is easier than the other, I assume it still doesn't make up for the hurdle of learning a new system.
- rkomorn 8mo ago
  > I wonder if there are people that moved to the U.S., switched to Fahrenheit and now find it more intuitive than Celsius. I've done the move twice in each direction. Neither is more intuitive. When I moved back to C after 22 years in F, I had to adjust again. It took a few months. The other times were after fewer years, but still took (re)adjusting.
vablings 8mo ago
The UK uses miles and miles per (UK) gallon. We talk in feet, inchs lbs and stone for weight. But when it comes to engineering works it is ALL now in metric aside from the older builder, all of my schoolwork was in metric, and we never dealt with the hellish conversions it was all SI units, and we just had to know maybe one or two magic constants in physics and chemistry (molar and something else to do with joules in bond enthalpy) I worked as an engineer and the only drawings specified in imperial were pre 1970s and all the CNC controls are programed in mm feed rates in mm/rev or mm/min
evil-olive 8mo ago
> Inches/feet being base 12 divides better into thirds and fourths, which is very useful in construction. all of the math normal people use in everyday life happens in base 10. "it's easy because it's base 12" is an absolutely ludicrous idea. what's 7'5" divided by 3? divided by 4? what happens if you need to divide by 5? and sure, there are various mental math tricks you can learn to make this easier...or you could just use the metric system. 7'5" is 226cm. that's a normal, boring, everyday, base 10 integer. you don't need to learn a special set of "mental math for base 12" tricks. instead you can re-use the same mental math tricks you use for every other base 10 number.
insane_dreamer 8mo ago
> inches/feet/yards ... more convenient for daily use only because that is what you are accustomed to because I grew up with metric, m/cm are much more convenient for daily use I will allow that a "foot" is useful as an approximate intermediary unit between m and cm > Inches/feet being base 12 divides better into thirds and fourths, which is very useful in construction. again only because the US construction industry grew up using fractions instead of decimals
bigger_cheese 8mo ago
I've lived with deg C my whole life it is what I'm used to, the way I experience weather is in 5 degree increments - I live on East Coast of Australia. My Internal rule of thumb is: Below 10 deg C - it is cold, Heavy jacket weather 10-15 Typical winter weather (at least where I live) light jacket 15-20 Spring/Autumn weather long sleeves no jacket required 20-25 Pleasant day T-shirt weather 25-30 Getting hot, ceiling fans/AC time 30-35 Hot 35+ very Hot
johnnyanmac 8mo ago
>Fahrenheit has more precision without using decimals Meanwhile, I'm fine at 98.6 degrees, but everyone freaks out over 100 degrees. it's a more precise unit, right? feet/inches make more sense to be attached to. they are based on your body parts (roughly), and we spend a lot of time looking at humans. inches divide our fingers, feet are... well, feet. And yards are steps. We intuitively know what all those feel like through everyday life compared to the scientific way we derive a centimeter. inches and feet being base 12 is more a coincidence than anything else (or maybe not. Maybe there's some golden ratio shenanigans at play).

Tor3 8mo ago

What's the problem with decimals? They're all numbers. -4.5 degrees C is fine, isn't it? (The actual temperature right here right now). Where's the problem?

gonzalohm 8mo ago
You don't even need decimals. 45x10^-1. There, fixed
sfn42 8mo ago
You don't even need decimals. Nobody who uses celsius gives a shit about the decimals. It's -4 or it's -5 and even that distinction is irrelevant. Unless you're doing some kind of scientific calculaton there's no need to think about decimals of celsius at all. Just like Fahrenheit users surely don't care whether it's 50 or 53 or whatever. It's around 50, that's all you need to know.
- Ekaros 8mo ago
  Only place I could imagine something is cooking and even there I probably would not be able to differentiate steak at 56C, 57C and 58C...
  - ginko 8mo ago
    It might make a difference for mashing when brewing beer but even that’s a crapshoot.
    - Kim_Bruning 8mo ago
      Yes, but then you might conceivably still measure temperature in degrees Réaumur, if it's a rather traditional brewer. Or so I was told by a Reliable Source(tm).
  - ghaff 8mo ago
    For sous vide, I will differentiate by 1 or 2 Fahrenheit degrees but I take your basic point.

jlongman 8mo ago

That’s funny because when I work with Fahrenheit I just work with 5°F ranges to compensate for the approximate mental math required. Eg very quick mentally, 100°F = 37.778 °C (thanks autocorrect) = (100-32)/2 = 34. But if it was closer to freezing say 42°F =5.556 °C (again) so 5°C. So arbitrarily we could say 57°F was 12°C =53.6 °F actually. But a true Canuck knows knowing the temp is barely half the battle, what’s the wind speed and humidity? 29°C can be a lovely day if it’s dry or completely unbearable if it’s humid. We hardly ever use decimals for weather-related measurements, the other factors above being more relevant. Contrast that with measurements where I would say if you need to know a precise one you should be using decimal; ie what do you do if it doesn’t precisely third or fourth? If you’re talking about tool sizes then any system works as long as your froodle matches the grommlet.

candiddevmike 8mo ago
(F - 30) / 2 = ~C C * 2 + 30 = ~F
- SECProto 8mo ago
  No need to simplify this. (F - 32) / 1.8 = C C * 1.8 + 32 = F I personally find the math just as easy to do accurately. For example, 87F -32/1.8 = 55/1.8 =~30.5C. Compare that to your approximate method, which would give 28.5C, which is just wrong (Maybe I just got really good at this when working a public facing job with a lot of American tourists - they would ask what our celsius temperatures were "in real units", so I got quite comfortable converting the air and water temps. Fahrenheit never once became intuitive to me, though.)
  - tzs 8mo ago
    For C to F you can often simplify the mental math by doing the multiply by doubling then taking off 10%. E.g., to convert 31℃ to ℉: 31 x 2 = 62. Subtract 6.2 = 55.8. Add 32 = 87.8℉. If you want to round the result to the nearest integer the subtract 10% step is a convenient place: 31 x 2 = 62. Subtract 6 (rounded 6.2) = 56. Add 32 = 88℉.

modo_mario 8mo ago

>Everything packed into this tight range. AS someone that grew up with metric that feels fairly natural and not tight at all? >Inches/feet being base 12 divides better into thirds and fourths, which is very useful in construction. I used ruler tapes with both metric and imperial on either side and i always wondered how one could use the inches since they're so big and didn't always have the same minute subdivisions. Also doing my math in decimals seemed easier than calculating with quarter or 1/8th inches or smaller. >For science, sure, I'll use metric. Surely it would feel more natural to use the same for everything and all measurements. I want to know how much rainwater my IBC roughly holds. I take out my measuring tape real quick. I'm not even sure how I'd get started in imperial without some strong intuition build up over years?

svara 8mo ago
> (...) grew up with (...) feels fairly natural (...) Really all there is to that discussion.
- modo_mario 8mo ago
  Mostly yeah at which point the only relevant arguments are being able to tie in with the rest of the world and being able to easily tie measurements togheter/do math.
threemux 8mo ago
I mean it's mathematically a tighter range. I think part of this comes down to the more mild and less variable European climate. There is just less emphasis on air temperature so you don't see the drawbacks. Your tape measure didn't have 1/3, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, and 1/32 subdivisions? Sounds like a bad tape measure (or really just one where US Customary was an afterthought). As for science, well, most people don't do it. Those that do can use different things in different contexts, it's not that hard.
- modo_mario 8mo ago
  >Your tape measure didn't have 1/3, 1/4, 1/8, 1/16, and 1/32 subdivisions? I think one of em did and the other didn't. Either way it seems far more difficult to do some math with.

flohofwoe 8mo ago

> They're both more convenient for daily use. That's really just because you're used to it. The rest is rationalization... OTH of course the rest of the world can hardly complain since we didn't switch time or (angle-)degrees to decimal either ;)

etiennebausson 8mo ago
Not switching to metric for time is reasonable, because there are already two existing 'natural' units for time (the day and the year), and they don't align on each other in metric (a year of exactly 1000 days would be so much easier, but we'll have to deal with reality as it is... or accelerate the rotation speed of the planet I suppose). So long as we live on earth, metric time won't make much sense.
- amanaplanacanal 8mo ago
  A year and a day don't line up at all, so we get weird leap days.
  - sowbug 8mo ago
    Is there any reason they should? Unless the Earth were tidally locked to the Sun, I'm not aware of any reason a day would have any relationship to a year.
    - samus 8mo ago
      It would be convenient to not having to deal with leap days and other such constructs. Of course, we cannot choose how these things behave, and therefore using a calendar not aligned to the natural cycles of our planet would be even less convenient, and would only start making sense when humanity develops into an interplanetary civilization.
- IAmBroom 8mo ago
  The US isn't on a 365.24-based system, either. Days don't fit neatly into years, anyway. That would have no impact on decimalizing sub-day units: 10 decidays in a day, 2 millidays to cook an egg... But no country did it, which speaks to the power our time traditions really hold in our psyche.

Kim_Bruning 8mo ago

An eyeballed yard is roughly the same as an eyeballed meter. An eyeballed foot is 1/3 of that. You can stick 4 inches in 10 cm roughly. And I just poke my nose out the window and look outside to see what the temperature is Freezing.... ~30°F.... ~0°C Need coat... ~50°F... ~10°C T-shirt..... ~70°F... ~20°C Melting..... ~90°F... ~30°C Rules of thumb can be learned either direction! ps HN tables are not really a thing, are they? pps Suspiciously many experiments are conducted at 293K

cucumber3732842 8mo ago
What you're ignoring is that a hundred plus or minus is a good range for average humans to grapple with and Fahrenheit splits the temperature swings in a given region across an approximately 100deg range. So using Fahrenheit results in a pretty decent "as high as it can be without being clumsy" measurement system that covers just about all earthly temperatures. If we only cared about increments of five or so degrees you could go higher resolution and it'd be fine because rounding would occur like we do with vehicle speeds. Or we could go lower resolution and just make the degrees bigger, which is basically what celsius is.
- Kim_Bruning 8mo ago
  Eh, all the degrees (Celsius, Fahrenheit, Réaumur, etc) are all about equally bad. Nicest thing that can be said about Celsius is that it's decimal, connected to water (0=freezing, 100=boiling) so it plays well with the rest of metric. Kelvin is actually the most practical of the lot, FSVO [1]. It's not a 'degree', because it's anchored at absolute zero. It's just a bit unwieldy for our day-to-day, with room temperature at 293K. But I can imagine if people were to grow up with it, it wouldn't be too bad even then. [1] eg. "Why can an aircon still heat the house at ten degrees below zero?"- "Well akshually, you still have 263K of heat energy to pump, not an actual problem"
  - samus 8mo ago
    Right, we are just arguing which is the most practical range. It's like choosing a calendar: we could define one using entirely metric time units, but nobody would want to use it as long as human civilization is anchored on Planet Earth.

gonzalohm 8mo ago

Interesting. As an European living in the US. The only US units that I find useful are cups, teaspoons and tablespoons. And that's only for cooking. It's way faster to measure volume than weight (although less accurate)

kakacik 8mo ago
Those are not US measures, we use them in Europe as well
- justincormack 8mo ago
  They are different sizes to the American ones.
- gonzalohm 8mo ago
  Really? I have never seen them in use in Spain
- rkomorn 8mo ago
  I've not seen them used as precise measurements in France or Portugal. In the US, you buy measuring spoons that have specific sizes (1tbsp is 1/2oz, and 1tsp is 1/3tbsp).
consp 8mo ago
It used to be based on relative size, so if you have a set of spoons and cups and use the same for all measurements they are ballpark right for your recipe (and some minor difference accounting for user error). These day's it's defined anyway in both metric and imperial. As soon as you start weighing something from the recipe it goes out of the window as that defines the rest of the relative measurements. For that reason I really dislike the recipes telling you to measure teaspoons of spices but grams or ounces of flour. I don't have two sets of measurement cups available. These days most cooking sites mention both though. On a sidenote: an ounce is 100g here and a pound 500g. Mainly by being in common usage and translated to common used weights. "An ounce more okay?" is an easy way to sell more without mentioning how much it actually is in numbers.

jeppester 8mo ago

I like this! I wonder if there's a place on the internet where I can find more of this sort of seemingly strong and well-thought out arguments for something that is so clearly subjective (if not just inferior).

cucumber3732842 8mo ago
>seemingly strong and well-thought out arguments for something that is so clearly subjective Any platform where snooty articulate people congregate will have such arguments by the bushel.
- hencq 8mo ago
  > by the bushel Well played
nayuki 8mo ago
https://www.reddit.com/r/Metric/ https://www.reddit.com/r/Metric/

eddyg 8mo ago

Fahrenheit forever! 0°C.................100°C Cold Dead 0°F.................100°F Really Cold Really Hot

btbuilder 8mo ago
0C = Frozen!
- ghkbrew 8mo ago
  Only if you're made of pure water at standard pressure. Which I'm not.
  - Kim_Bruning 8mo ago
    Close enough for government work, actually. And it's not just flesh. Lots of things behave approximately like water, which is handy for all sorts of back-of-envelope estimates.
  - samus 8mo ago
    You better take precautions against frostbite below that temperature though. And a lot of things need to be watched as they could be frozen then.
evil-olive 8mo ago
I see this argument repeated every single time someone tries to defend Fahrenheit. if "room temperature" was smack in the middle, at 50 degF, you might have a point. but no, it's pure post-hoc rationalization. being naked at 0 degF will kill you. being naked at 100 degF will (usually) not. they're not remotely equivalent. instead, think of it this way - human beings are mostly water, and 0 to 100 degC is "percentage of the way from water's freezing point to boiling point". room temperature is "about 20% of the way to boiling". 40% or higher starts to cause our bodies to overheat. a typical sauna will be somewhere between 50 and 70% of the way.
Polizeiposaune 8mo ago

d--b 8mo ago

Can you at least switch to 1/10th of inches? The 1/4th, 1/8th, 1/16th is very annoying

convolvatron 8mo ago
we do. being a machinist in the US means being able to convert between decimal inches, mm, fractional inches, and things like feet all the time. not to mention other completely arbitrary units like sheet gauge, fastener number and inverse thread spacing. there are also decimal feet for carpenters. this for me is the real appeal of metric, not that somehow a meter is magical, but at least there is one system, with a consistent set of rules, that allows us to do some magic things like tell the approximate volume of water given a weight. edit: omg I forgot about nominal wood sizes. the underlying system actually has different units based on the material and the usage. copper gauge is not the same as steel gauge. thats pretty hopeless. for precious metals we also have the pennyweight
- deleted 8mo ago
  [deleted]
AngryData 8mo ago
That would be negating 90% of the usefulness of using a fractional system though. It is barely a step up from using a prime number like 7 or 11 as a number base or divisor.

relaxing 8mo ago

You don’t need to worry about taking up room for a decimal place when your outdoor temperature is only ever 2 digits at most.

gordonhart 8mo ago

Miles didn't click for me until I learned that it's defined by how far you'll travel in 1,000 paces (where a pace is an L+R step). Now I find it very useful to convert steps<>distance traveled, which is actually quite useful if you walk a lot!

zzzoom 8mo ago
You'd have to be quite tall to average an ~80cm step. 193cm (6'4") according to a quick search.
- gordonhart 8mo ago
  The original unit was the [slightly smaller] Roman mile which was standardized with the military in mind, i.e. able-bodied men in their prime. Seems like the average for men today is 2.5 feet or so which is more or less still on the money for 2k steps/1k paces to a mile.

AlotOfReading 8mo ago

Even in construction, feet/inches/yards kinda sucks. 1:10 scale drawings are painful to do manually, division by 2 is a bit erratic, and bolt sizing is a horrible mess. Metric bolts are nice and consistent. With you on temperature though.

briffle 8mo ago
My wife was a surveyor in a past carreer. We have a tape measure in the garage that measures to the nearest hundredth of a foot. It is just so weird to see. Forcing decimal on a measurement that does not normally have it just makes me uncomfortable. https://surveysupplyinc.com/lufkin-12-foot-hi-viz-engineers-pocket-tape-engineers-dual-scale-phv1312d/ https://surveysupplyinc.com/lufkin-12-foot-hi-viz-engineers-...
- nayuki 8mo ago
  The tension that you experienced is common in imperial and traditional systems of units. Here's another example for you: Carpenters working with wood use mixed feet, inches, and fractional inches (like 2' 5 3/8"), but machinists working with metal use exclusively decimal inches (like 29.375"). Both hold steadfast to their traditions and won't consider adopting the other system. If you take a look at American grocery stores, you'll see things like: “40 × 16.9 FL OZ (1.05 PT) 500 mL BOTTLES / NET 676 FL OZ (5.28 GAL) 20 L” https://www.instacart.com/assets/domains/product-image/file/large_a4c1a08d-4d30-4ea3-869b-4060b8fbb951.jpeg https://www.instacart.com/assets/domains/product-image/file/... To dissect that product: It's a pack of 40× 500 mL of bottled water. I have zero problems with the metric labeling. But for the US customary units, you can see a jumble: decimal fluid ounces, decimal pints, a large number of fluid ounces, and decimal gallons. Note that the gallons can be broken down into mixed units (and some packaging does that); 676 fl oz = 5 gal 1 qt (0 pt) (0 cup) 4 fl oz exactly. The US units are basically "whatever I feel like using" (don't forget tsp and tbsp, which aren't used in the current example). The metric units for liquid consumer products are always mL and L, which greatly simplifies learning and comparison for the consumer.
- zokier 8mo ago
  > My wife was a surveyor in a past carreer. We have a tape measure in the garage that measures to the nearest hundredth of a foot Survey foot or international foot?

TheCoelacanth 8mo ago

The extra precision is fake. They might have measured precisely at the weather station, but local variation in temperature makes that extra precision meaningless unless you are located exactly where the measurement happened. Even in a climate controlled room, there will be a degree or two of variation between different parts of the room.

evil-olive 8mo ago
for another example of this: a lot of people "know" that the average human body temperature is 98.6 degF. that extra decimal point gives people false confidence about the measurement being more precise than it is. because so much science (even in the US) happens using the metric system, the actual measured average [0] is 37 degC, and 37.0 degC == 98.6 degF. the nuance of the average being more of a confidence interval (37 +/- 0.5 degC, possibly larger) gets lost as well. 0: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_body_temperature https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Human_body_temperature

rickydroll 8mo ago

If you want to get even more divisive, try converting people to metric baking measurements. Baking bread and cakes is much more repeatable if you use mass rather than volume to measure ingredients. The results from this recipe were never consistent when I used volume measurements. I converted to mass in metric and now I get consistent results. adapted from: [https://www.justsotasty.com/wprm_print/11594 https://www.justsotasty.com/wprm_print/11594](https://www.justsotasty.com/wprm_print/11594 https://www.justsotasty.com/wprm_print/11594) Banana Brownies Prep Time: 15 minutes mins Cook Time: 35 minutes mins Total Time: 50 minutes mins ### Equipment - 9x13 inch (23 x 33 cm) baking pan* ### Ingredients - 227 g unsalted butter (2 US sticks) unsalted butter (The better the butter, the better the results. In the U.S. market, Kerrygold yields the best results, followed by Cabot, and "well, it's still brownies" Market Basket house brand.) - 400 g dark brown sugar - 2 large eggs - 5-10 ml vanilla extract - 150 g mashed bananas (about 2-3 large, brown bananas) - 156 g all-purpose flour (I prefer King Arthur All Purpose Unbleached Flour) - 60-70 g cocoa powder - 2-3g teaspoon salt - 280(ish) g chocolate chips (I prefer Ghirardelli Bittersweet 60% Cacao Baking Chips, use 1 bag) ) ### Instructions - Preheat the oven to 350F degrees (180C or 170C fan forced). Line a 9x13 inch (23x33 cm) pan with parchment paper or aluminum foil leaving an overhang around the sides. Alternatively, lightly grease the pan. - Melt the butter in a double boiler. Add in the brown sugar, stir, and let it sit in the double boiler, stirring occasionally until the mixture has a nice caramelly flavor. - While the butter-sugar mixture is cooking in the double boiler, combine the dry ingredients. - Sometimes cocoa powder is lumpy, and you may need to sift it. The alternative I use is combined flour, cocoa powder, and salt, and use a whisk to mix it all together and break up any lumps if there are any. - Take the brown sugar butter mixture off of the double boiler and mix in the mashed bananas and vanilla. - The bananas usually cool the mixture enough that the eggs won't cook when you put them in, but if the mixture is hot, add some flour, add some of the dry ingredients, and that will cool it down enough to add the eggs safely. - Stir in the chocolate chips. - Pour/spoon the batter into the prepared pan and bake for about 35 minutes, or until an inserted toothpick comes out clean or with a few damp crumbs. - Cool fully (about 4 hours), then slice. Store brownies in an airtight container in the fridge for up to 4 days. (Never last that long in my house)

bigstrat2003 8mo ago

childintime 8mo ago

Nobody I know speaks of temperatures in decimals of Celsius, like no one.

humodz 8mo ago

> The difference between 75 (usually a beautiful day) and 85 (hot) is 23.8C to 29.4C. If you convert a nice, round number from one system to the other, you'll end up with a more precise, less nice number, which will give the impression that Celsius is harder to use. In reality, people from metric countries just think in 5-degree increments: 25 is a beautiful day, 30 is hot. It doesn't feel any harder to read than Fahrenheit. I wonder if there are people that moved to the U.S., switched to Fahrenheit and now find it more intuitive than Celsius. If one is easier than the other, I assume it still doesn't make up for the hurdle of learning a new system.

rkomorn 8mo ago
> I wonder if there are people that moved to the U.S., switched to Fahrenheit and now find it more intuitive than Celsius. I've done the move twice in each direction. Neither is more intuitive. When I moved back to C after 22 years in F, I had to adjust again. It took a few months. The other times were after fewer years, but still took (re)adjusting.

vablings 8mo ago

The UK uses miles and miles per (UK) gallon. We talk in feet, inchs lbs and stone for weight. But when it comes to engineering works it is ALL now in metric aside from the older builder, all of my schoolwork was in metric, and we never dealt with the hellish conversions it was all SI units, and we just had to know maybe one or two magic constants in physics and chemistry (molar and something else to do with joules in bond enthalpy) I worked as an engineer and the only drawings specified in imperial were pre 1970s and all the CNC controls are programed in mm feed rates in mm/rev or mm/min

evil-olive 8mo ago

> Inches/feet being base 12 divides better into thirds and fourths, which is very useful in construction. all of the math normal people use in everyday life happens in base 10. "it's easy because it's base 12" is an absolutely ludicrous idea. what's 7'5" divided by 3? divided by 4? what happens if you need to divide by 5? and sure, there are various mental math tricks you can learn to make this easier...or you could just use the metric system. 7'5" is 226cm. that's a normal, boring, everyday, base 10 integer. you don't need to learn a special set of "mental math for base 12" tricks. instead you can re-use the same mental math tricks you use for every other base 10 number.

insane_dreamer 8mo ago

> inches/feet/yards ... more convenient for daily use only because that is what you are accustomed to because I grew up with metric, m/cm are much more convenient for daily use I will allow that a "foot" is useful as an approximate intermediary unit between m and cm > Inches/feet being base 12 divides better into thirds and fourths, which is very useful in construction. again only because the US construction industry grew up using fractions instead of decimals

bigger_cheese 8mo ago

I've lived with deg C my whole life it is what I'm used to, the way I experience weather is in 5 degree increments - I live on East Coast of Australia. My Internal rule of thumb is: Below 10 deg C - it is cold, Heavy jacket weather 10-15 Typical winter weather (at least where I live) light jacket 15-20 Spring/Autumn weather long sleeves no jacket required 20-25 Pleasant day T-shirt weather 25-30 Getting hot, ceiling fans/AC time 30-35 Hot 35+ very Hot

johnnyanmac 8mo ago

>Fahrenheit has more precision without using decimals Meanwhile, I'm fine at 98.6 degrees, but everyone freaks out over 100 degrees. it's a more precise unit, right? feet/inches make more sense to be attached to. they are based on your body parts (roughly), and we spend a lot of time looking at humans. inches divide our fingers, feet are... well, feet. And yards are steps. We intuitively know what all those feel like through everyday life compared to the scientific way we derive a centimeter. inches and feet being base 12 is more a coincidence than anything else (or maybe not. Maybe there's some golden ratio shenanigans at play).