I am not saying that is even remotely true, but oh the irony…unless you are saying the UK isn’t in Europe
Of course humans haven’t always used base 10 place value. Who said that we did? What I said was that we’ve always had to round to a finite number of decimal places.
What in the world are you talking about here? The result of every calculation is always rounded, because the numbers you plugged into the calculation in the first place is also rounded. And since when is 1/7 irrational?
Am I required as a grocer to label items such as 1l bottles of beverages and 250g blocks of butter in non-metric units in the USA? What about in the UK?
The bottles are labeled by the manufacturer, not the grocer.
No irony. Many countries continue to use mixed systems, with imperial measures commonplace for some purposes – for instance, where I live Fahrenheit oven temperatures for cooking are routine alongside Celsius for weather and everything else, and both coexist in weight and volume measures for food pricing and recipes, although the metric quantities are the official legal ones. The point is that it’s very unusual to not have codified metric as a national standard even if there are exceptions:
Since 2006, three countries formally do not use the metric system as their main standard of measurement: the United States, Myanmar, and Liberia. In the United Kingdom metric is the official system for most regulated trading by weight or measure purposes, but some imperial units remain the primary official unit of measurement. For example, miles, yards, and feet remain the official units for road signage – and use of imperial units is widespread. The Imperial pint also remains a permitted unit for milk in returnable bottles and for draught beer and cider in British pubs.
10/7
So what you are arguing is that integers are rounded? Once again I will ask for a cite on that one.
But also note how your response ignored the fact I was talking about cumulative error.
That cumulative error by forcing decimalization is very real.
1/3 == 1/3
1/3 !== 0.3 exactly
So lets say I want to divide up the IPK into three parts Do I need a scale that accurately reads out to 0.333333333 or I find three pieces that all weigh the same amount as the other two yet together weigh the same as the IPK?
Once again, this is not an argument that the customary units are better in all cases, it is an argument that the metric system is far from perfect, and may be unsuitable for some use cases.
Which is to say, they are imperial units which have metric equivilants.
The imperial unit is Angstrom. The original description of DNA was 20 AU. But if you were working in some other field, the unit would be micro inch: DNA diametr is 0.1 uin.
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The French rationalised their measurenment systems to a French system, which Napoleon popularized. The English rationalized their measurement systems to an Imperial system, which their trade empire puplarized. Other countries have chosen to allign themselves with one or the other over the years. In the second half of the 20th centrurey, England turned their back to their traditional trading partners and choose closer union with the French and Germans.
It would be naive to believe that any kind of international standard had anything to do with what is “intuitive”: one of the main purposes of standards is to lock out competing suppliers.
“main standard” is open to interpretation there.
As I noted above all US customary units are directly defined off of the SI units and have been so for a long time.
The above claim seems to be sophistry if like in the UK:
It seems to be an arbitrary cutoff in a scale of Metrication.
What is the cutoff?
Federal Register, Vol. 56, No. 23, page 160, January 2, 1991
I have searched for clarification on what the “official” bar is in this claim, but it seems to be escaping my searches.
So if you can provide a cite on what that bar is it would be appreciated.
Where in the world are you finding integers? When can you ever possibly know that you have an integer number of units of anything? The only place that’ll ever happen is that you know that the mass of one particular lump of platinum-iridium alloy in Paris is exactly integer 1 kilograms. And if I ever, for some reason, have need to refer to exactly one third of that mass, I’ll say “one third of a kilogram”. There, 100% metric and no rounding whatsoever.
In the real world if I’m measuring flour or something, and the recipe calls for 1 kg but I’m dividing the recipe by 3, then I’ll use 333 grams of flour, which will be perfectly fine, because I never knew that original kilogram to one-gram precision anyway. And if I’m doing some more sophisticated chemistry experiment where I need more precision, then I’ll get out my analytical balance and measure out 333333333 micrograms. And if I need infinite precision, then I’m screwed no matter what system of units I’m using, because it’s impossible to measure anything to infinite precision in any system of units.
The difference here isn’t that the American system lets you measure 1/3 of something precisely, because it doesn’t. The difference is that the American system lets you pretend that you can measure 1/3 of something even when you can’t, and pretending you can do something when you can’t is going to get you into a lot of trouble.
The one time per decade that I actually needed and/or wanted to know any of that stuff, it would be quite easy to pull out my calculator.
I find it telling that you have to resort to such obscure examples in order to try to invalidate traditional measurements.
That’s your problem right there. The people who think that metric is such a good system have a fundamentally warped view of measurements in general. You had to come up with a whole new way of measuring ingredients in order to make the metric system work. (And no, I am not joking.)
The cooking one is actually easy. One cup is sixteen tablespoons. Anyone who does a lot of cooking should know that. The rest? Forget it. I agree that metric is an easier approach to measurements for most things.
The idea of measuring ingredients by weight rather than volume is completely independent of the question of metric vs. American (it just so coincidentally happens that America is the only major holdout on volume for dry ingredients, too). I only mentioned a scale because you asked about kilograms of flour. If you had asked for liters of flour instead, then a measuring cup would be the appropriate tool to use, and the answer would have been the same: The amount needed would be 1/3 liter, 1/8 liter, or 1/16 liter.
Should, maybe, but how many actually do? I’d wager that most don’t, especially among the subset of the population who claim to not understand metric.
I converted inches into feet then divided by 7.2 and came up with 90 gallons in my head … but this is a type of problem I do on a regular basis … as in how many 35-gallon barrels makes up 3/4 yd[sup]3[/sup] …
Maybe you’d be surprised … you’ve used an extreme example, 1 tablespoon for a fifty fold batch … similarly we can present an equally difficult problem in metric, 225 ml for a batch 37-1/4 fold …
I remember the effort here in the US to convert to metric … for many older folks the problem was the conversion factors … how many ml’s for 3-5/8 cups … how many metric shingles to cover a 16 by 12 foot roof … how many kilometers across 7 sections …
How many feet per second to land a probe on Mars …
Tradition is strong … to this very day, SI uses 60 seconds to a minute … the same as in the very first written records humans created … the only people who don’t use this standard is UNIX-weenies … I’m not saying this is right or wrong, just that it is …
Decimal time never caught on even in France, so tradition clearly has a large influence on people’s inclinations.
I have heard that decimal time was used in China, and I would like more details, possibly from a historian.
Units like minutes and hours are of course not SI units, but their use is considered acceptable. (In the EU, the intention was to make it illegal to label consumer products in British units alongside metric units, but they eventually relented. Not before a grocer was convicted of selling produce in Imperial measurements.)
One fish, two fish three fish.
But I know because it is a convention, just like decimal. And there are some conventions like the field of geometry that absolutely do not fit the claims above.
Are you really arguing that a^2 + b^2 = c^2 intrinsically has rounding errors?
My take on this was that if you measure a length using a ruler, the measurement always has a degree of precision, so you get 30 plus or minus 0.1 mm, for example. This is clearly the case with any unit length and any way of subdividing it, nothing to do with decimals. Or with ideal geometry where you say segment A is sqrt(5)-1 times as long as segment B.
Btw here is one proper algorithm for adding finite-precision decimal numbers. It can be done.
The fact that US traditional units are officially defined in terms of metric units is completely irrelevant to common usage and therefore to this discussion. Argue for metric or against it, but you surely are not trying to argue that this bit of esoterica somehow makes the US a metric country? It has as little relevance in typical usage as the official definitions of the base metric units themselves. When I’m measuring a carpet for the family room I really have zero concern with whether a meter is defined in terms of the earth’s geometry, the distance between scratches on a platinum-iridium bar in Paris, or how far light travels in a vacuum in some tiny fraction of a second. I only care that everyone is using the same units and that my tape measure reasonably conforms to it!
The meaning of “main standard” is not complicated. Outside of the three named countries – the US, Myanmar, and Liberia – everything is metric with specific enumerated exceptions. Weather reports and forecasts are in Celsius degrees, all or almost all food items and commodities are sold in grams, kilograms, milliliters or litres, etc, and that includes the UK. That there are exceptions doesn’t change the predominant system of measures. Admittedly, the use of miles and MPH and the like for road signage is a rather surprisingly big exception in the UK, but they use metric for just about everything else.
Anyway, this was all a digression from my comment in #80, where I found it quite humorous that someone had declared that traditional units were superior because humans have an “instinctive” understanding of how far a mile is. Apparently we’re born with it. Whereas one assumes by implication that only French communists have any idea how far a kilometer is, and it’s doubtful that even they know! 
Well that’s the rub, the imperial system is based on human life experiences. Metric is not. Imperial will always be a more natural unit of measurement than metric, though if born under metric rule one can adapt and live a perfectly normal life.
Well of course metric is difficult if you don’t use it. The whole point to going metric is that you’re not converting ml to cups, or kilometers to sections.
kanicbird, what human life experience is the mile based on?