Metric Sucks!

Great Debates
1

I never really had strong feelings about the metric system until I read an essay by the brilliant (and beautiful) Joan Pontius called Metric Land. Now available at Metric Sucks. (I can’t locate a home page for her anymore.)

Metric is base 10, which is supposed to be its strength. Yet base 10 isn’t a strong number system. It doesn’t have enough prime factors, most notably the number three. So you simply can’t get a third of a meter, for example. But people use fractions. They’re handy and simple. They’re easy to express and understand. Pontius points out that,

With a foot you can divide by not only by two prime factors, 2 and 3, but also their multiples, 4 and 6. Metric takes a clumsy number base, ten, and creates a clumsy measuring system to match it. To get back to the elegance of the imperial system, new measures have to be created: instead of feet, metric gives us “the-standard-length- that-carpenters-buy-their-wood-in”; instead of a pint, metric gives us the-standard-quantity-of-beer-in-a-bar (“a pintje”).

So now I’m tending to agree that metric sucks.

How do you feel. Is metric the way to go, or is it a fool’s paradise? Why do you feel this way?

2

All measurement systems are arbitrary. If the English system indeed used base twelve I would argue that the ease of fractional representations would be a bonus. The whole “base ten is easy!” argument makes a lot of sense until you actually start using the metric system, in which case there are all sorts of professional accepted representations (in electronics we stick with 10[sup]3*n[/sup] for example instead of just powers of ten). I’ve never heard anyone give distances in megameters.

IMO, that tiny bit of effort it takes to do a conversion when such a thing is necessary is just no big deal. The metric system is ok, I don’t mind it, but I don’t mind foots and pounds, either. I understand short distances better in metric, but long ones better in miles. I know piss-all about how much a newton really weighs, and for all that I believe people give their weight in kilograms anyway.

I think the whole argument is futile and childish. But fun! :smiley:

3

Ack! Eris, you had the opportunity to use otiose and jejune in the same sentence. And you blew it! :smiley:

4

Hmmm. Call me a sentimental old fool, but I’d rather subtract 1.25 from 3.10 than 1 1/4 from 3 1/10 any day. Actually, having the measurements and the number system act in sync makes life rather easy when you do such outlandish tricks as adding or subtracting lengths, compute areas etc.

If Joan can’t handle measuring 33.3 (…3333 to the desired accuracy) cm on a board, then perhaps she shouldn’t take up carpentry. :stuck_out_tongue:

5

Not only did I blow that, but I said “foots” instead of “feet”! :smack: I’m on a roll today! :stuck_out_tongue:

6

Whoa, back up there Tonto.

In my field, this is really the only practical way to go. As a Microbiologist, we do everything in base ten. I can’t imagine giving bacterial counts in any system. The calculations are just plain easier when you can give count in CFU/mL which allows you to easily to move up or down to your target concentration.

When I worked in a paint lab we did all measurements in per gallon, and the calculations were convoluted and hard to scale.

When you’re working a lot with measurements of volume, it’s way easier to do it with metrics. What would be the equivalent to a microliter (a measurement I use a lot) in English measurements? No really, I want to know, I have no idea.

7

That would be an “iddy bit”. :slight_smile:

8

You do everything in base ten and can’t imagine it any other way? Hmmm… do you suppose there might be a connection there? :slight_smile:

9

Thanks Lib, I figured that might be it, but I was confusing it with teeny tiny.

Eris, I thought about that, but because of the logarithmic growth of cultures, the easiest way to measure them is by diluting them serially. In other words, you take a 1 mL sample from the original, and plate it for a zero dilution.

Then you take a 1 mL sample from the original, and put it in 9 mL water, thereby diluting it by ten.

You then take a 1 mL sample of that and dilution in 9 mL water, thereby diluting it by 100, etc.

Since we can have count in samples as high as 10[sup]10[/sup] I don’t know an easier way to do it than by serial dilution. If you used English measurements what would you do? 1 pint in a gallon? The problem is that English measurements don’t have good measurements for small liquid volumes. Would you have to start breaking down into tenths of ounces?

10

Spiny Norman writes:

Hmmm. Call me a sentimental old fool, but I’d rather subtract 1.25 from 3.10 than 1 1/4 from 3 1/10 any day. Actually, having the measurements and the number system act in sync makes life rather easy when you do such outlandish tricks as adding or subtracting lengths, compute areas etc.

If Joan can’t handle measuring 33.3 (…3333 to the desired accuracy) cm on a board, then perhaps she shouldn’t take up carpentry.

The distinction is not addition and subtraction; we can easily say “1.25 feet”. The distinction is conversion between related units, such as centimeters and meters (or inches and feet). And here there simply is no comparision; metric is the bee’s knees.

In fact, the argument in the opening message is not an argument against metric; it is an argument against base 10. And here js_africanus has a point. Ten is not the best damn base in the world. Twelve would have been better; at least it gives us both 2 and 3 as divisors. But it seems like this is whistling in the wind. I do not expect us to change our base of calculations any time soon.

11

Having worked a bit in construction (specifically, in a truss shop), I’d have to say this stuff about fractions is pretty much BS. Yeah, we use feet and inches in construction, even in officially metric Canada, since the lumber mills, set up to produce primarily for the American export market, turn out lumber in those dimensions. Frankly, though, it’s more often a pain in the ass.

For example, it’s not uncommon to need to find the length of a diagonal measurement. How do you do this? Well, with trig - or, if you’re like me and always forget which is sine and which is cosine, with the pythagorean theorem (the triangles in question virtually always have a right angle somewhere). And the answer you get is decimal. This isn’t too bad if you did the calculation in inches, and only have to convert the decimal into sixteenths, but if you did the calculation in feet and have to convert the decimal into both inches and sixteenths… Blah. Of course, the computer usually does all the work, but the point is that a fractional system isn’t what it’s cracked up to be. And 1/3 of an inch isn’t anything that’s marked on your tape measure, even if 1/3 of a foot is.

Let’s face it. Most people can do base 10 math in their head. Whatever advantages base 12 has, very few people can do base 12 math in their head. Not even addition and subtraction, let alone multiplication or division. Quick, how many inches in 17’ 9"? No idea? Me either. Quick, how many centimeters in 5.46m? I rest my case.

Not that imperial measurements are all base 12 - that’s the problem, some are base 12, some are base 2, some are base 4, some are base 16.5 (16 1/2 feet to a rod, 160 rods to a half mile, now aren’t you glad you know that?), some are…well, you get the picture.

12

Bah, what you don’t see is that our entire system of counting is screwed up! What we need to do is go back to how the Mesopotamians did it and have a nice base-twelve system of numbers. Then we can finally drop this entire base-ten garbage.

13

I’m European. I, personally, think the metric system is the best current system of measurement that we have, because it is internally consistent like Gorsnak here so eloquently points out.

However, if our (meaning, humanity’s) number system should be changed to a base 12 system, I think it would be nice. I like clean numbers. Having several prime factors would help in this. How many “dids” in 13.A34 “dods”? 13A.34, of course. As long as it’s expressed in a number system that has the same base as the measurement system, everything is fine. Metric is nice for us now, because we use base 10 for everything. It’s what people learn from they’re toddlers.

14

Being equally proficient in both Metric and Standard, I have to say that the only time I became completely confused was the first time I saw a measuring tape marked in 10ths of feet!

15

erislover: Ever hear of an Engineer’s Scale? That’s a nifty little thing with the English foot divided into tenths, hundredths, etc.

16

You can’t take 1/3 of a pound, either. And what is 1/3 of a gallon? What is 1/3 of an acre?

How many gallons in an acre-foot?

The metric system is ELEGANT!

Trinopus

17

The metric sytem has many advantages. Mainly in calculations but the English system is much easier to visualize because it deals with less units and its units are more tailored towards some of the objects that they are used to measure. For example, it is easier to visual someone who is 5 feet 5 inches rather than 1. something meters or countless centimeters. It is easier to visualize the difference between some one who is 5ft tall and somone who is 6ft tall rather then using the metric system. So to make it short one is easier to visualize the other is easier to calculate with. The difference between fractions and decimals I guess.

18

I would hazard a guess that this is just because you’re used to the english system. I can visualize 5’6" better than 1.8m, because I’ve spent my life visualizing feet and inches. But by your logic, I should be able to visualize cm just as well as inches (because, really, they’re both equally arbitrary), but I can’t - inches still win out. Anyway, your argument only would work for units of length, which may be an important part of measuring systems, but is far from the only one. Is a cup easier to visualize than a liter? A lb easier than a kg? One btu easier than 1 watt?

As an ex-engineer, although I communicate in english units, I’m proficient with (and have an affinity for) metric. When in school I hate hate hate HATED working with english units, as did everyone else I knew. Converting lb(mass)-feet into oz(weight)-inches is a mighty bitch of a problem. Converting N-m into mN-cm is trivial. (For one thing, who was the village idiot who decided that mass and force should be given the same name in the English system? Unless you count the mighty “slug”, which nobody actually uses, because… well, because that would just be too simple.)

Bottom line, the metric system is just nice, by virtue of the fact that multiplying by 10 is a non-issue, given our base-10 way of life. Now, the day we all grow extra fingers and decide to start counting in base-12, I’ll consider changing.
Jeff

19

Mayans had 20 fingers?!

20

2.2 lbs? That is, 1 kilo at standard earth gravity? The measurement of mass in the “English” system is the attractively named “slug”, IIRC.