# Unwieldy units (not just an imperial issue) - Particularly USA? **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [April 25, 2019, 9:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unwieldy-units-not-just-an-imperial-issue-particularly-usa/833029 "2019-04-25T09:35:20Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 7\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Balthisar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/balthisar/32/2825_2.png) [@Balthisar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Balthisar)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2019, 11:29am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unwieldy-units-not-just-an-imperial-issue-particularly-usa/833029/21 "2019-04-26T11:29:09Z")
> [@Ludovic](#): > > But if that were the case then there would probably be at least some people going around saying their 67 inches tall or whathaveyou instead of 5 foot 7. I usually say that my height is 72 inches when asked, in the USA. I’ve never thought that this was uncommon. Most people that ask aren’t in the USA because here I’m average height so my response is usually 1.83 meters when in countries where my height is a novelty and people ask. I’m not sure why I use whole units for one, and decimal for the other. Probably because I detest the use of _mixed unit_ in the English system. When the pediatrician weighs our daughter, for example, why-oh-why does she report 20 lbs, 8.3 ounces? That’s mixed units _and_ decimal! And medicine is science! And most of our physicians are from metric countries! ---
**Author:** ![GaryM](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/garym/32/241_2.png) [@GaryM](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GaryM)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2019, 1:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unwieldy-units-not-just-an-imperial-issue-particularly-usa/833029/22 "2019-04-26T13:28:46Z")
> [@dtilque](#): > > Personally, the place where I notice this kind of thing most is in speeds for objects in space. For terrestrial speeds, I’m comfortable with either miles or kilometers per hour. Those numbers are virtually always less than 1000 – easy to comprehend one, two, or three digit numbers. > > But I read a lot of astronomical literature where the preferred speed unit is Km/sec. When talking about the speeds of stars, planets, or spacecraft, that’s what I’m most comfortable with. And just like with terrestrial speeds, these numbers are usually less than 1000. > > Then there’s newspaper popularizations about space or astronomy where they inevitably use the units millions of miles (or kilometers) per hour and I’m lost. I have no feel for those quantities. How do you feel about parsecs ? ---
**Author:** ![Novelty\_Bobble](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/a3d4f5/32.png) [@Novelty\_Bobble](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novelty_Bobble)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2019, 4:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unwieldy-units-not-just-an-imperial-issue-particularly-usa/833029/23 "2019-04-26T16:21:34Z")
> [@GaryM](#): > > How do you feel about parsecs ? I know that 12 of them equal one “Han” ---
**Author:** ![Nava](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/da6949/32.png) [@Nava](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Nava)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2019, 7:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unwieldy-units-not-just-an-imperial-issue-particularly-usa/833029/24 "2019-04-26T19:39:35Z")
> [@bump](#): > > Or you’ll see things like in Italy, where stuff like salumi is technically measured in grams, but people buy it by the ‘etto’ (100 g), because nobody likes saying ‘350 grams’ or ‘0.35 kg’, but saying “three and a half etto (tre e mezzo etto)” is more intuitive. In the same vein, you’ll often hear distances of over 100 yards and under a quarter mile described in some conveniently small number of ‘football fields’ in the US. Eh, they’re still using the SI: _etto_ is short for _ettogram_, hectogram. Depending on the scale they may even be able to set it to hg; it’s less common than the thousand-points but the software isn’t more complicated. > [@penultima\_thule](#): > > An anecdote > > At work, we have just changed our distribution 3PL to a leading multinational German outfit. > > We have thousands of cubic metres of product stored in their facilities, and the cost is a weekly rate per cubic metre, but for reasons known only to the Teutonic mind, all their inventory and warehouse activity reporting of volumes is in cubic centimetres. It allows them to report what they think is a more precise number without having to tackle decimals. My favorite unit, from one of my clients: instead of Units or Pieces like normal people, they used the THousand. With three decimals :smack: ---
**Author:** ![UltraVires](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/u/ecccb3/32.png) [@UltraVires](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/UltraVires)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2019, 7:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unwieldy-units-not-just-an-imperial-issue-particularly-usa/833029/25 "2019-04-26T19:46:21Z")
> [@Novelty\_Bobble](#): > > sure, but when you get to speaking about the weight of, say, the Saturn V, would you not switch to thinking of it in x number of gravel loads instead? There feels to me to be a fuzzy threshold above which we need another benchmark unit (I could’ve said “yardstick” there but that would have been unnecessarily confusing) I suppose I could. But as I come to think of it, had I never bought a truck or had a gravel driveway, I don’t know that I would have ever used a ton as a unit of measure in my life. Honestly, the only time we used it is in hyperbole, “Geez, what you got in this suitcase, honey? This thing weighs a ton!” Clearly, we know what a ton is, but to conceptualize it, I think it is easier for most Americans to do so in pounds, even if it is a large number. And I think that was the whole point of the statistic about the Saturn V: Look at how hugely large that thing was! ---
**Author:** ![markn\_1](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/f9ae1b/32.png) [@markn\_1](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/markn_1)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2019, 8:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unwieldy-units-not-just-an-imperial-issue-particularly-usa/833029/26 "2019-04-26T20:33:33Z")
I really hope that wasn’t the point of that statistic. “We’re going to use phrasing that’s deliberately hard to understand, so you will experience awe rather than understanding.” ---
**Author:** ![dtilque](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/d6d6ee/32.png) [@dtilque](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dtilque)\ **Post date:** [April 26, 2019, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unwieldy-units-not-just-an-imperial-issue-particularly-usa/833029/27 "2019-04-26T21:57:40Z")
> [@GaryM](#): > > How do you feel about parsecs ? No problem with parsecs. Astronomers use that much more often than light years. The conversion between ly and parsec is easy enough that I can do at least an approximation in my head. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/unwieldy-units-not-just-an-imperial-issue-particularly-usa/833029.md?page=1)