Fun fact- the imperial aka standard system actually makes a lot of sense and in many regards can be superior to the metric system. When it comes to precise or scientific measurement the metric system tends to carry advantages, but in average life we actually don’t need that level or precision and it can be quite a pain. Where it gets interesting is equivalents. So yes- metric is base 10, that seems very easy- 10mm to the cm. 10cm to the decimeter, 10 decimeters to the meter and so on. So of course we know a thousand millimeters to the meter and a hundred centimeters to the meter etc. but… when in normal life outside perhaps dosing medicine do you measure things in individual milliliters? A soda can with one serving is 12 ounces. 355ml. It is much easier to tell you’ve drank roughly 1/12th of that than 1/355th no? But- why do we see ML so often? I
Mean- as this illustrates. An ML is not comparable to an ounce. It’s exponentially smaller. The deciliter is about 3oz’s- but it’s…
… seldom used. If it were exactly 3 ounces to the deciliter an 8oz soda would be 4 deciliters. Much more manageable. Much easier to divide or monitor in practical every day terms. You know you’ve had about 1 deciliter when you are down about 1/4th the can. You can easily split that between 4 servings compared to 355. But that’s kinda our jump in metric- we measure by such a tiny unit that we need 355 to fill a soda can or we can’t measure anything other than increments of 3 ounces without resorting to decimals. This holds true for other types of measure too. And this is where it gets interesting. Breaking gallons into ounces is kinda silly. That’s not something you generally need to do unless you’re using a measuring cup like to bake, in which case metric or standard you’re still needing the cup to measure, the units just change ands we deal in fractions instead of decimals. We will come back to that. But- a gallon breaks into 4 quarts>8 pints>16 cups… a cup is 8ozs. 8ozs is 16tbsp…
Do we see a pattern? So metric requires you know the difference between a decaliter or decameter and a deciliter or decimeter and so forth, just as standard system requires you to know the measurements. Metric tells you in the name what decimal place divisible by tens the unit is compared to the “master unit” suffix for that unit type- but outside of the metric system- who uses prefixes like “deca” in common speech? So beyond counting, the terms are obscure in language the same that standard names are obscure in language outside of counting. Now- as the measure relates to the real world- if you need to picture how much an amount is without referencing a familiar reference (like figuring 2 liters is about a bottle of soda or 1 gallon is a jug of milk…) what seems easier? Picturing a centimeter as 1/100th of a meter, or picturing an inch as 1/12th of a foot? The smaller number is more easily relatable mentally without trained conditioning in familiarity.
But if you don’t know intuitively or can’t picture the length of a meter, how do you estimate a centimeter or kilometer? You don’t any more than you’d be able to picture a mile based on an inch, but it’s generally easier if we don’t know the base unit bit know cm or in to work with 36 inches than 100cm. But generally we will just guess off things we know a size for. If we know a person is 6ft or 1.828 meters- we can estimate something is half that length or 10x that length right? So what’s easier- 10x6 or 10x1.828? 6/2 or 1.828X0.5? We run into two issues in metric that rarely come up in standard-
1. The numbers get big, even when they are small. If we aren’t multiplying by a large number where the variance would matter, we still need 2 digits minimum to express a distance that can use 1 in standard. If you use 5 feet 5 inches of person, to get the same accuracy you need 3 or 4 digits. You’re now working with a 4 digit number for all operations.
2. Fractions aren’t the devil they get made out to be. Ask most people and they’ll tell you metric is more precise. Better for precision. Well… not really. That’s on of the faults of base 10 we will get to. Decimals cannot actually reflect all fractions. 1/4 is .25a they are the same. Ok. What about 1/3? .33333… forever. But no matter how far you go, if you multiply using while numbers .3 to any number of places, it will not equal to one. There are lots of examples like this where we can do calculations that should equal 1 and get .9999 forever. To my earlier examples on length, as we do calculations, fractions tend to be concise where decimals can et out of hand. Decimals have two big advantages. The first advantage is that even though they can get long, if you remember where the decimal goes you can work them like whole numbers. The second advantage is that computers like decimals and don’t care too much about really long numbers- computers are efficient and capable at processing…
.. numbers. Fractions though… computers don’t process fractions. They can represent fractions to a user, but on a base level they can’t parse them. So computers need decimals, you can’t feed them fractions. This is a big part of why the metric system took off when it did the way it did and why more high tech and modern or scientific segments tended to adopt metric- because they were using computers to run data or operate machines or output information. If you have decimals to feed in, you don’t need to convert the fractions to decimals or run code to do the job and you don’t have e to worry about what to do when a fraction cannot be turned to a decimal accurately. It’s simple input output as long as the original or final data is dealt with in decimals. As this post points out, standard isn’t well suited to decimals. It isn’t base -0 so that gets ugly fast. Why isn’t it in 10’s all neat like metric…?
Well… base 10 kinda sucks for many things in many ways. Numerous times in history societies have used non base 10 systems of counting or measurement and many technical and scientific professions Al’s have tried to abandon base 10. Look it up, this is long and not done yet, but base 12 actually tends to work better. Base 10 is pretty much- and this is funny because a major complaint about standard is how derpy it is to measure things off body parts… base 10 is a system rooted in the fact people have 10 fingers. Yeah. That’s it. Not for some mathematic advantage but because if you can’t visualize numbers in your head because you lack the brain power, you can count on your fingers. Because before paper or calculators etc. and before written math it was a real pain..
.. to perform lots of operations of math because you couldn’t just scribble down the problem and work it out and have everything tracked. You either had to do it all in your head and carry the numbers etc. or you needed something to hold your place- like fingers. Interestingly some base 10 cultures like certain North American native tribes didn’t count fingers, they counted the spaces between fingers which still gave them 10- but to signal “3” by holding up fingers you’d hold up 4 fingers to signal the 3 spaces. Certain South American tribes were base 8, they counted on the knuckles and so had 8 to work with. Babylonians who give us the frost recorded use of decimals and many other more advanced math concepts had decimals that were like base 59 with no concept of 0 to fill null spaces! In a base 59 number system, you’d count to 60 before you moved from the “ones” column to the “tens” column. It sounds weird but base 12 is actually very nice for working with.
It isn’t a coincidence that across times and cultures many things are counted in 12’s. The dozen, the foot, so on. As shown earlier with gallons, pints etc. there are patterns in standard measurements. We get nicely divisible amounts generally that fit into fractions very cleanly. There are 4 quarts to a gallon. We know that a quart is 1/4 a gallon and it’s reasonable to estimate a gallon container being 1/4 or 1/2 or 1/8 etc full. So 1/8 full would be a pint and 2/8ths is 1/4 and 1/4 a gallon is.. a quart, so there are 2 pints to the quart. It sounds complex but it’s actually REALLY easy.
We don’t need to divide by 10’s or 100’s or 1000’s to do everyday things- you can divide or multiply by 2,4,8,12,16 as needed. Most of the time it wouldn’t be common in daily life to go beyond 16, but if you needed to it’s easy enough to figure out because fractions are very human friendly. Your eyes are very good at telling when there are 4 equal pieces and how many are there or missing or how…
.. many would fit a certain space. Most schools traditionally teach fractions and THEN decimals because fractions tend to be easier to conceptualize and understand intuitively. It’s easier to tell a child to count the pie. One pie. Count the slices, 8 slices. 1 slice is 1 out of 8. 1/8th of 1 pie. It takes much more abstract thought to tell a child 1 lie equals 1 and that if there are 8 slices one slice would equal 0.125 of the pie. It’s easier to learn to add 1+1 to get 2/8 with 2 slices than teach 0.125x2 or 0.125+0.125 and it’s easier to remember and generally an early requirement to remember your single digit multiplication tables. We grow up of course, and if you work with decimals for your whole like they’ll be easier than fractions and vice versa, but you’ll probably pick up fractions quicker and so two kids starting at the same age will likely be more proficient with fractions at a given age than decimals if all factors are equal.
Don’t get me wrong- I love metric and generally prefer it. It’s what I’ve worked with most for most of my life. I can tell a 14mm diameter by eye or 50ml in a dropper etc. for many things I’m helpless in standard. I have no idea what a 3/4 fastener looks like. I can eyeball mm’s of distance but can’t tell you by looking how many 32nds of an inch something is unless I estimate in mm and convert to inches and then to fractions. But I also have no intuitive concept of how tall someone is in meters or how many kilos a person weighs or what those numbers mean without converting to lbs. I can calculators spring rates in lb/in like a bandit but kg/mm I hate. Some things I prefer decimals and some things I prefer fractions. I can’t tell you by looking how many sq ft a house is, but if you tell me how many sq ft a house is I can tell you if it is a decent size or if your stuff will probably fit. If we start taking about sq meters I have no clue at all without converting. So it all depends.
That said- standard isn’t quite as clumsy as this makes it out to be. Unlike metic we don’t generally need to calculate larger volumes out using the tiniest gd’d units of measure that take hundreds or thousands to express a space, or skip to measures so big that you have to express things in minute decimal form like .00376 sq/km. We actually just have a better unit to switch to, and then you can generally multiply or divide by 2,4,8,12,16 etc. if you need to convert to bigger or smaller units.
That is generally true to some extent. If you grow up with one system you’ll tend to find it easier, and if your mind has developed the habit of thinking of the world from a certain framework it tends to be easier to continue doing that than to force a different cognitive model.
That said, it all depends. A 22 year old may have 18-20 years of experience with one system or the other only. If they were moved to an environment where they were immersed in the other system- they may find that after 40 years they still find the original system easier, but they may also find that in 5 years they acclimate to the new system and find it easier. There is also the sort of nuance of what “easier” means- we could say an alcoholic struggling in life would have an “easier” life sober, but making that change and living with it may be “harder” from their perspective. If we get away from the subjective, certain systems are better suited to the innate cognitive abilities of the average human brain.
Once again ladies and gentlemen... @guest_ (applause). Yes, fractions make up SAE because that is comfortable for life. But fractions of an inch are where I say no. Ask which is larger 3.175 or 3.572mm... easy. How about 1/8 or 9/64 inch? Are you sure? Some SAE units had good runs but we've evolved technologically enough to do better. Wrenches can be metric without people being butthurt. If not, I suggest a new SAE unit based upon the width of my fist, almost exactly 110 mm or 4.3307 inches. 10mm = .11 fist, 9 mm = 0.09 fist.. easy decimals.. easy convert to metric.. anyone complain.. they can get a whole 1.00 fist in the mouth.
Next, well discuss why TIME has no metric or SAE conversion and how the US Navy controls you daily lives.
Lol. I barely own any wrenches that aren’t metric. Or tools in general. I keep the non metric basically in a pile as I rarely ever need them save for some odd thing. I find metric much easier to work with when it comes to machines and most things, but I was accustomed to metric from an early age and barely used standard save for doing basic construction and such where standard units were much more common at the time. You gave the answer to your question away, but I’d tell you 9/64 is larger and it’s very easy to know even if you don’t know off the top of your head from familiarity with fractions- assuming you are proficient in basic math, 8 goes into 64 8 times. 1x8=8. 1/8 is 8/64 which is very easy to tell it is smaller than 9/64. I do grant you that 3.1 vs 3.5 doesn’t require the extra steps to figure out, but I’m not sure the use case of when you’d be dealing with those numbers and need to know one was bigger than the other-
Especially if you already know both numbers- if you measured, you’d know which was larger because you saw when you measured on your tool. If you are eyeballing- if you can eyeball 3.175mm to the decimal- you have me impressed. A common one is you’re looking for a tool and you see a fastener and you grab tool A and tool A is too big/small, so you say “let me grab the next size since it’s close…” organizing your tools means you could just grab the next tool, but it would also be pretty odd for most non machine tools to be sized in 3 decimal digit increments of mm. Outside specialty cases I guess. But yeah- I’m not a personal fan of standard. It isn’t as hard or nonsensical or mysterious as people make it out- but I find metric generally easier save for a few things like height or land speed.
Metric is preferred because it is vase 10.. but technically, it is still a measure of convenience. Volume of water vs weight of water at gravitational constant of .... 9.81 m/s/s? Not 10? Of how the ancients failed us! Wait.. we can fix it by changing the length of a second, right? I mean time is all base 10.. noooo.. base 60? Again?
I digress. In grad school I took an afternoon to attempt to "metric-fy" time to make this adjustment. 100 seconds to a minute, 100 minutes to an hour, maybe 20 hours to a day, 5 days a week. Stupid Earth and solar system isn't perfect.. and that bothers my OCD.
Lol! Yeah. It just sucks that so many things don’t want to conform to convenient measurement. It is pretty bothersome isn’t it? So much “mathematical perfection” or beauty in nature, but then there ar these things that are just ugly out of nowhere. Like if one little thing was just a teeeeeny bit different it would all work out just so nicely, but then it doesn’t. Lol.
Mean- as this illustrates. An ML is not comparable to an ounce. It’s exponentially smaller. The deciliter is about 3oz’s- but it’s…
1. The numbers get big, even when they are small. If we aren’t multiplying by a large number where the variance would matter, we still need 2 digits minimum to express a distance that can use 1 in standard. If you use 5 feet 5 inches of person, to get the same accuracy you need 3 or 4 digits. You’re now working with a 4 digit number for all operations.
We don’t need to divide by 10’s or 100’s or 1000’s to do everyday things- you can divide or multiply by 2,4,8,12,16 as needed. Most of the time it wouldn’t be common in daily life to go beyond 16, but if you needed to it’s easy enough to figure out because fractions are very human friendly. Your eyes are very good at telling when there are 4 equal pieces and how many are there or missing or how…
That said, it all depends. A 22 year old may have 18-20 years of experience with one system or the other only. If they were moved to an environment where they were immersed in the other system- they may find that after 40 years they still find the original system easier, but they may also find that in 5 years they acclimate to the new system and find it easier. There is also the sort of nuance of what “easier” means- we could say an alcoholic struggling in life would have an “easier” life sober, but making that change and living with it may be “harder” from their perspective. If we get away from the subjective, certain systems are better suited to the innate cognitive abilities of the average human brain.
Next, well discuss why TIME has no metric or SAE conversion and how the US Navy controls you daily lives.
I digress. In grad school I took an afternoon to attempt to "metric-fy" time to make this adjustment. 100 seconds to a minute, 100 minutes to an hour, maybe 20 hours to a day, 5 days a week. Stupid Earth and solar system isn't perfect.. and that bothers my OCD.