Click image for full graph!
Graph by: Unknown
-
-
Copy & paste this:
« Previous Why I Drink Alone in the Bathroom | CPR Instructions Next »
» 330 TPS Reports
Leave a Reply
-
Latest Comments
Talk Nerdy to Me on Strange Facts About Our Feline… Lord Lolland on 15 Ridiculous Law Rusty Shackleford on Top 10 Read Books xEmoxLoverx on Strange Facts About Our Feline… lol64 on Why Wouldn’t You Just Ge… lol64 on The Only Reasonable Expla… rose1992ellie on Strange Facts About Our Feline… MegaMetal96 on The Cost Is Nothing Compared t… Siber on Strange Facts About Our Feline… GermanGirl on Looks Good to Me meatshield on The Cost Is Nothing Compared t… scubadog2000 on At Least You Can Still Look… Dexaan on Strange Facts About Our Feline… Beat-down on Strange Facts About Our Feline… Stannis Baratheon on Top 10 Read Books 
Cheezburger Company Blog
![\"Quantcast\"/](\"http://pixel.quantserve.com/pixel/p-94wNw88f65Rhk.gif?labels=MTVN%20Digital%20Tribes\")
This is going to be just lovely!
It will be ok. We know that the US is officially metric.
I don’t understand how the Month/Day/Year is wrong….that’s more of an opinion really.
Exactly, one tells you the date then the month, which makes sense, its like an adverb, the fast cat, the tenth of november.
But month day year makes sense too, think of it as a Calandar. You have the month and under each month is the dates.
Yeah, there are plenty of good reasons to use M/D/Y. That stupid pyramid in the picture proves nothing about which is better. The most logical order is Y/M/D, which several countries do use, so this image’s creator is just showing their ignorance by claiming the “rest of the world” uses D/M/Y.
The reason DD/MM/YYYY is logical to me is that it is saying “this day of this month of this year.”
YYYY/MM/DD is simply reversing that: “This year contains this month contains this day”.
Essentially, it’s like chronological order of time.
for data/file organization YYYY/MM/DD tends to work better
i concur
ISO standard is YYYY/MM/DD.
No it bloody isn’t. It’s YYYY-MM-DD, as I’ve already said several times on this stupid thread.
a million times ^this!
would that logic fall into the time of day? yes yes it does hh:mm:ss, this hour:this minute: this second
Year month day is rational yours is silly and backwards and makes databasing difficult.
Obviously I need to clarify.
I like BOTH of the formats that I mentioned. Because they are both in chronological order. BOTH are logical to me and each has their use. I was agreeing with the use of both.
What I don’t find logical is MM/DD/YYYY or YYYY/DD/MM because it’s messed up.
IMO, there is no good reason to use M/D/Y. There is nothing that format can do that D/M/Y can’t do… but the fact that M/D/Y exists causes all sorts of problems.
@The master – the Calender idea doesn’t work for M/D/Y. Yup, you have Days under each month… but you don’t then have Years under each Day, do you?? You have a calendar for the whole year, and under that you have a page for each month, and on each page you have days. That is either YMD or YMD.
For a calendar to be M/D/Y, you really should have a calendar for the whole year, with 31 different pages, and on each page you have the months that have those days. So on Page 1 – which is Day 1, you would have 12 boxes… one for each month. But on Page 31 – which is Day 31, you would only have 7 boxes… Jan,Mar,May,Jul,Aug,Oct and Dec.
If Y/M/D is the MOST logical order, as you say, then why is that? It’s because it’s in order of magnitude, with the largest first and the smallest last (like when we state time – 10:09:08 clearly means 10 hours, 9 minutes and 8 seconds. No one would ever think that it’s 10 seconds, 9 minutes and 8 hours (D/M/Y)… or 10 minutes, 9 seconds and 8 hours (M/D/Y).
Thus, order of magnitute is the most important thing… you obviously agree with that. If you’re going to be silly and not use Y/M/D… then at least using D/M/Y is a sensible option as it’s just reversed. There is NO reason to suddenly flip it up and use M/D/Y or D/Y/M or M/Y/D or anything else.
It’s just that in America people like to say “February Thirteenth” not “The Thirteenth of February” so they format it like that :/
For this reason it would make sense to universally adopt either Y/M/D or D/M/Y.
Mixing the two is a pain in the behind. When I look at release dates on Gamefaqs for example, I tend to have to guess the date. Which one is M, which one is D?
The idea of putting the *adjective* (which is not an adverb) in front of the noun is an English convention. Though other languages I’m not familiar with may use the same convention, many languages (such as the Romance languages) place the noun before the adjective.
For example, in Spanish, black coffee is cafe negro. Just because adjective-noun is the order we use in English, it doesn’t mean that it is the logical order of things.
The day starts the month and the month starts the year. Logical order: DD/MM/YEAR. It’s also how the U.S. military does it.
actually they do 17/sep/2012 so technically a 3rd way of doing it
Thats how lots of Americans do it. I think its funny that the rest of the world thinks we just us the Imperial system when most important things are done in SI.
Dude. All important things are done in SI.
MM/DD/YYYY is used because the way Americans say (Feb 17 -> 2/17).
DD/MM/YYYY is European. The laguages mainly have dates said DD-MM.
YYYY/MM/DD is used because you can easily sort files with dates like this.
Except it’s yyyy-mm-dd.
thats the same goddamn thing all your changing is / to -
Yes indeed, all I’m doing is changing it from /, which is wrong, to -, which is right.
not sure if trolling or unix guru (yes unix no ‘L’s here)
Unix has nothing to do with it. Indeed, the default output on the date command on my Mac (which is, of course, a version of BSD Unix) is ddd mmm dd hh:mm:ss zzz yyyy (e.g., Thu Feb 23 17:51:24 EST 2012).
“Click image for full graph” doesn’t reveal the full graph, but does contain a highly offensive slur.
Still loled at it. With all these facts combined, we can’t say that slur is completely inappropriate
Arbitrary Retarded Rollercoaster:
0 degrees Celsius = 273_3/19 (mixed number) degrees Kelvin
-300 degrees Celsius = -26_16/19 (mixed number) degrees Kelvin
1 light year(s) = 9,460,476,721,872,000 meter(s)
1 meter(s) per second = 3.6 km per hour
You do not say degrees Kelvin, you just say Kelvin.
That’s true, but some of us are old enough to have been taught to say “degrees Kelvin” in school and not all of us have heard about the change. Heck, I still feel vaguely odd saying “Celcius” instead of “Centigrade” and “hertz” instead of “cycles per second”.
-300°C? You, sir, fail in physics… 0°C is just the temperature where water is beginning to freeze (under normal circumstances). And the 3,6 km per hour result from the hour having 60 minutes and the minute having 60 seconds. Same thing with light years. And that is an international convention. The french guys tried a decimal hour system after the french revolution, but that failed somehow. Does the imperial system have a better output on that calculations? No.
Ok how many times a day does the average person use lightyears or meters per second or goes out side into a 300 degrees below freezing blizzard every day? 0 degrees is the temperature that water freezes (helpful for fridges and weather) at sea-level which is where most people live, 100 degrees is where clean water boils (helpful for cooking and stuff) at sea level. all our systems of measurement and weight are decimalised which makes calculations a breeze, and one thing that is also helpful 1 litre(volume) of water weighs exactly 1 kilo(wieght). a 1cm by 1cm by 1cm area of water equals 1 millilitre and 1 gram. there are 1000 metres in a kilometre, 100 centimetres in a metre, 10 millimetres in cetimetre and 1000 millimeters in a metre. Imperial is out dated and hard to use with different ratios for everything. metric is used by almost all the world except for america and a few others which the biggest or most important. The reason why americans still use it is because they don’t want to learn a new system because the last one they learned was so difficult!!!
*aren’t the biggest or most important.
Only an American would get that offended at a humourously offensive joke aimed at Americans, yet when the joke is aimed any other culture/ethnicity/demographic, everything is fair game… Jingoism at its finest.
Yes. We’re such hypocrites because we don’t like being called lame
But the ‘standard’ system is lame- we only use it because we refuse to admit that it’s ungainly, annoying to use and has none of the elegance of metric. Humans have ten fingers and we learn to count using them- powers of ten is the system that is the most intuitive.
Really, 5280 feet to a mile? REALLY? Tell me that point of that!
Well I would post something according to the (Forgive the brony language) buck you, thats why, But I do tend to talk to my friends in metric system, just because we take physics, and thats how the world works for us… And thats how Battlefield 3 mesures things…
*Measures, Oh god, I look stupid now.
I think you’re reading too much into comments again.
:[
Because British, Australian, German, French, Japanese, and any other ethnicity you want to throw out there takes no offense to someone making fun of their culture.
if my culture did something as retarded as this, and I’d be told, I would probably accept it and laugh about it.
Plus, I don’t take offence as long as I may offend.
Daniel Gabriel Fahrenheit (24 May 1686 – 16 September 1736) was a Dutch-German-Polish…
Perhaps the earliest tables of English linear measures, Arnold’s Customs of London (c. 1500) indicates a mile consisted of 8 furlongs, each of 625 feet, for a total of 5000 feet (1666⅔ yards, 0.947 statute miles, 1524 metres…
Damn americans, being dutch and german and polish and english.
yes, fahrenheit was a german. but we were smart enough to shun his stupid scale an listen to the swedish guy (i know, both scales contain arbitrarily chosen points, but celsius made his more easily reproduceable)
Except that we didn’t quite listen to Celsius. The scale he originally proposed was upside-down, water freezing at 100 and boiling at 0!
We use Fahrenheit’s scale because it is the scale for mercury, which was very popular in thermostats. While there are water thermostats, mercury was more common and i believe faster acting. Hence the Mercury scale. Celsius measures water temperature, hence boiling at 100 and freezing at zero.
That isn’t even wrong.
Celsius can still use mercury it just has different graduations on the side so i don’t really see your point. Also water thermostats aren’t that useful because of how little water expands with everyday temperatures such as 20 degrees or on really hot days 40 degrees, which isn’t even half way to boiling. Also on realy cold days it would freeze and may not melt for a while leading to inaccuracies that is why we just use mercury scales with celsius graduations.
Well I accept the joke above because I’ve had Physics for two years now and sometimes its difficult for me to remember I live in a customary world and not a metric world.
What I’m saying is that he implied that only Americans take offense to someone mocking their customs. To me he seemed like another European on his high horse that needed to be taken down a peg or two. I know not the most effective way to do it but I tried.
I think all of you have it wrong…
I think the original commenter was more upset about the fact that ‘retarded’ was used to describe the graph
The word ‘retard’ has actually become highly offensive here in the U.S., and it’s not very P.C. to use
If the title read: “Arbitrary Roller Coaster of Stupidity” there wouldn’t be a problem, nor the original comment
What to you seems retarded, to the other culture seems normal so you are just being arrogant, insensitive, and ignorant.
Your nickname is an oxymoron.
You’re a moron.
My friends and I don’t get offended when we make fun of each others cultures.
I love you.
its not our fault your country sucks and we have all the money.
Can’t tell if trolling or just stupid.
You are one of those guys that cements these cliches that say americans are dumb. Because you’re dumb AND proud of where you’re from.
There are a lot of cool people from America and a lot of cool people from Europe, why don’t you just shut up and stop being a shame for your country?
Also: You don’t have all the money, many people that live in your country have much money, but your country does not benefit any more from that than any other. Your economy is a mess and you owe most of your dollars to china.
But that’s not even important, since it has nothing to do with the here discussed things and also nothing with how intelligent you people are.
Deal with it.
I have to agree with you on this, theres nothing I hate more than people reinforcing stereotypes (an I realize that my name is probable reinforcing a stereotype right now). But really I do not see how any of this matters. Americans and Europeans should not be arguing about stupid little crap like the order we put the date and whether football is better. All of this is minor differences and neither side is evil or wrong, we are all free democracies and therefore have traditionally been allies, we should be supporting each other in this time of need not bagging on each other. Also I admit that America is going through some hard times and made some questionable decisions lately, but after sticking with you Europe through WWI, WWII, and all of those other times that Europe has fallen into chaos I believe that we deserve a little more than fair weathered friends… after all our ancestors have died time and again to free your lands and we have given much sacrifice to help the people of Europe in their times of need and lost hundreds of thousands, or arguable even millions of lives doing so. The least we can ask for is a little bit of support in our time of need.
*There is
before I get trolled.
Good point, but tell that to the rating agencies currently setting our credit-worthiness down…
Also, who knows wether or not europe would have actually profited from a german invasion. Just saying, you can’t tell wether the american aid have been good or not…
Well my point was that the countries oppressing their people under such things as communism and tyranny are our real enemies, not each other.
Yes, I thank you personally for your personal help during WWII, in which, I presume, neither of us had even been born. I shall henceforth go and flog all the Germans for what their ancestors did almost 70 years ago since it offended you to such a degree that it took the US 4 years to set sail for our continent. I shall neither mention the free Polish, the free French and shall stay clear from the Canadians, Anzacs, South-Africans and British who had been fighting long before and had a rather big part in the liberation of Europe, nor shall I mention the fact that the USA’s wall street crisis in 1929 caused the financial crisis in Germany and therefrom the crises in the rest of Europe.
Since I will not mention this, I will say that we cannot take blame or thanks for what our (or others’) ancestors did.
You showed him!
*swings his arm standing somewhat behind him*
This isn’t going to end well…
how is the freezing/melting point of water *not* arbitrary?
hurr durr the fahrenheit scale is stupid because it has no direct relationship with this specific molecule’s physical properties! science has decreed that a proper temperature scale must be based on water!
Better a unit based on water than a unit based on cold weather and an ill person’s body temperature
let me know if you find a modern temperature scale that is defined in those terms. actually don’t bother, i won’t still be here and there is none.
Farenheit is perfectly reasonable. He got the coldest possible thing he could make in a lab (a salt water solution) and made that zero, then took the body temperature of an assistant and made that 100. I see no problem, given that there aren’t any convoluted subdivisions that make a degree F.
As for linear, weight, and volume measurements, yeah, they make no sense.
But, if you want something that makes the metric system look foolish compared to the imperial system, look at screw threads. Imperal (unified national series [UN]) has the nominal major diameter (maximum material condition) as the nominal screw size (thus, a ½”-13 UNC-3A bolt will have a diameter of .500″) while metric screws are smaller than their listed size.
Also, UN threads come in 4 classes (1A/1B [Home Depot junk], 2A/2B [industrial standard], 3A/3B [specific industrial use], and 5A [interference fit studs, used before stuff like Loc-Tite was designed, and slowly going away]…Class 4 [slight interference] threads are no longer used), while metric threads have various grades and positions (a LOT more work involved in calculating what is best).
Also, the Celcius scale only works with PURE water at sea level on Earth. Water’s boiling and freezing points change with regards to temperature and pressure (hence why a planet like Gliese 436b is covered in 800ºF ice).
u mad bro?
Not as mad as I am at the graph for using Celcius as though it is something scientists use, while we clearly use Kelvin in all of our formulas. Celcius is just the step size.
water freezes at 273.something and boils at 373.something.
I do believe 0K = -273.15ºC
The graph does not imply that scientists use Celsius. The graph is not about the units used by scientists — even in the US, scientists use the metric system. The graph is about the official government unit standards.
Actually, Fahrenheit did not set 100° as human temperature, but 96°. A later adjustment put 100° where it is so that the boiling point of water (212°) would be a round 180° from the freezing point. (Yes, 180° isn’t /very/ round, but they didn’t want to make a big change.)
And the Unified Thread standard is American, not Imperial. (It is also used in Canada, but that is American influence.)
@John almost correct. During WW 2 (as one can imagine) there was a lot of angst between British and Americas manufactured parts so in 1948 there was an international conference where the US, Canada and the UK decided to adopt a slight modification of the SAE tread system and called it the Unified system which the US and Canada use to this day. The major obvious differences are a 60deg included angle (as opposed to 55 for Whitworth) and a difference in some thread pitches. But also a gauge size for smaller threads which was poorly served by the old BA (metric) standard. They also had different AF (across flat) sizes and the spanner nomenclature changed as well to make it more consistent.
The problem was of course that the UK never did really abandon Whitworth and the rest of the world just went Metric.
Oh and at the same conference they resolved the inch issue, which up until then was slightly different, which could be diabolical
The inch is now defined as 25.4 mm exactly which is in between the old US and UK inches. So your system of measurement is derived from the metric system wether you like it or not.
A) The International Inch was defined in 1959.
B) The previous US Inch was defined as 1/39.37 of a meter in 1893. It is still used for surveying purposes.
C) It is not “derived from the metric system”, but rather defined in terms of the metric system. It is /derived from/ the (rather informal) old English system, just as the Imperial system was in 1824. The reason that the volumetric measurements are so very different is that before 1824 the value of, for example, the gallon depended on what city in England you were in, and the US standardizers chose a different city to the Imperial standardizers.
‘at sea level’, thank you for that, the rest of this thread is sort of foolish.
Actually… a scientist will laugh at you if you used Celsius or Fahrenheit for anything other than your tub water, water kettle, room temperature etc. They’re not even SI units.
Kelvin is the way to go! 0 Kelvin truly means 0 Joules of thermal energy.
And now you see why Kelvin makes sense for science and Celsius makes sense for normal stuff, since it’s not really practical, if you always have to use numbers about 250° to describe the weather and that stuff, and also, the freezing point of water plays a much bigger role in our lives than the point of no thermal energy.
oops, my bad, didn’t see what you were referring to, forget what I just wrote
You clearly actually don’t use the celsius scale.
Water plays a big role in our lives, and I get how someone with another scale couldn’t see how this connection makes sense, but it’s totally logical, since, when temperatures are used to describe the weather with zero at the freezing point, negative temperatures are the ones where stuff freezes. If you drive a car, this is pretty much the most important thing to know about temperature.
I never used the fahrenheit-scale, but I don’t believe it’s to hard to remember the freezing point in this one, and know that stuff as well, it’s still less practical.
I hope I could help.
If you live in MN, Celsius means having to use negatives FAR too often.
Use what is most convenient. There were no units (other than the cubit?) handed down from the mountaintop.
Might be a good indication that furless humans don’t belong there, though.
There was a reason for the native to migrate
(yes, I know temps above 100F are a good indication for humans to move out too, but it won’t damage you if you have water)
because science has never been proven wrong huh
No…That’s what makes it science.
When a scientific theory is shown by evidence to be incorrect, it is abandoned for a theory that better fits the observed facts.
And one litre of water weighs 1 kilogram and needs 1 cubic decimetre of space. Take that!
And 1 pint of pure water weight 1 pound. (And who the hell uses decimeters? Deci is as unloved as deka.)
False. A gallon of water at 38F weighs approximately 8.35 lb. So a pint is approx 1.0438 lb. Not 1. “A pint’s a pound the world around” is an approximation. Unlike in the metric system, where water at 4 degrees C (that temp because it is the maximum density of water), 1 liter = 1 cubic decimeter = 1 kilogram. Metric is superior. Note that I am an American.
note that you are also using a scale that has a wider range per degree. for every 1deg C you move almost 2 deg F. Plus the Celsius scale is french and screw the french.
Can’t really tell if stupid or just redneck….Celsius is Swedish
Note that you can use subdivisions of degrees (you know, the digits after the comma), so any argument based on the width of an unit is irrelevant.
And by the way, please note that French takes a capital F in English. I hope you’re no English-speaker, I would hate my French smart *ss to teach you your mother’s language.
“A pint” isn’t anything at all; US liquid pints, US dry pints (mainly used for berries and the like), and Imperial pints are substantially different values. The US inch and the Imperial inch, and the US pound and the Imperial pound were harmonized in 1959, but the volumetric measures were too hopelessly different. They aren’t even similar. A US liquid pint is 16 US fluid ounces, but an Imperial pint is 20 Imperial fluid ounces. And the fluid ounces are different, too. The two systems have nothing in common, except the words, and not always even that.
By the way, the word “ounce” literally means “one-twelfth” (it’s etymologically related to “inch”).
Tell that to the dB.
^Boom
vBoom to you
dB or deciBel is a logarithmic unit. The “deci” prefix is not in this case an SI prefix (what is it? 10^-2 ?) but rather refers to base of the logarithmic scale: “decimal,” or “base ten.” It is often used as a measure of sound, because the energy of a sound is logarithmically related to its loudness. This is why a 1000W stereo is only twice as loud as a 100W stereo when it is cranked all the way.
Equation is below:
[value (dB)] = 20*ln( [value (linear)] ) / ln(10)
No, a decibel /does/ use the SI prefix; it’s one-tenth of a bel. The fact the logarithmic scale is also decimal is a coincidence. The decibel is used instead of the bel because, on the whole, it’s about the smallest difference a human ear can register.
Attempt to look clever – FAIL
Yeah, too bad you’re wrong. 1 deciBel = 0.1 Bel. That’s why your formula there is being multiplied by 20 and not just 2.
And deci is 10^-1, not 10^-2.
Oh my goodness this formula is so wrong. Where did you get that?
sone I am disappoint
Just out of curiosity: Where are you from?
I totally agree with you on deka- but decimeters are used around here pretty often.
I have to say, as an Aussie, even though everything is metric here I have never, ever heard anyone use decimeters.
I think it’s a European thing.
its a way that they can combat Americans when we say you dont have an intermediate measurement between centimeter and meter. So you are 2.225M or 222.5cm… Which is hard to picture in your head for most people who dont think in terms of stacking pinky fingers (which are about 1cm) on top of one another for measuring the height of something.
that’s just not the reason.
It’s not even important to have that intermediate measurement. Why would I need to argue about it.
I don’t think the metric system is better because everything is just “a factor 10″ away from each other, I just think it’s easier to use, because the names of the units indicate how to calculate them (if you have a little feeling for latin, maybe that’s just me) and because it’s easier to calculate with powers of 10.
I know of only one everyday use of “deca-”, in decamired, a unit of color temperature. Like the decibel, it is used because it is approximately what a human can perceive.
Since 1 cubic decimeter = 1 liter, we use it all the time… Just under a different name.
One American pint, and only roughly. The Imperial Pint, used in Britain (nowadays for beer and milk mainly) is 20 Imperial fluid ounces; since the fluid ounce also differs between US and Imperial units, that’s 19.2 US fluid ounces.
What *is* true everywhere is that a pint is 1/8 of a gallon.
Technically, the gram is defined by the international prototype kilogram in France.
I’ve just remembered that quote from “Good Omens”
“Two farthings = One Ha’penny. Two ha’pennies = One Penny. Three pennies = A Thrupenny Bit. Two Thrupences = A Sixpence. Two Sixpences = One Shilling, or Bob. Two Bob = A Florin. One Florin and one Sixpence = Half a Crown. Four Half Crowns = Ten Bob Note. Two Ten Bob Notes = One Pound (or 240 pennies). One Pound and One Shilling = One Guinea.
In the UK they resisted decimal currency for a long time because they thought that “100 pennies to 1 pound” was too complicated
Ha ha … V funny. To be fair a base 12 system makes far more sense than a base 10 system. The Summerians knew what they were doing when they devised the base 12/60 system. Perfect for trading. The only reason we have a base 10 system is because we have 10 fingers. Think about it. Decimal came about because of an accident of evolution … or for us creationists … by the design of the creator. Something to ponder.
ALSO, it is obvious to anyone with a brain that there should be some mathematically pleasing relationship between length units of vastly different scales! of COURSE i need to be able to quickly calculate how many inches away the sun is!
That’s why we use miles, more than a kilometer, so the number would be smaller. Not like it matters.
And the fact that you’re example is stupid shows itself, since lightyears are not in the metric scale.
And you know that doesn’t make sense for any example. It’s just a fact that sometimes, you have to calculate between units, and it’s much easier and more logical to do so, if the calculations are the same, no matter how big the units we’re talking about are in the moment.
Also multiplying by ten or thousand is much easier than with these random numbers.
1 lightyear = 9.4605284 × 1e15 meters
Looks metric to me. Not a nice power of ten admittedly but SI units nontheless.
except when you have an intermediate length between a cm and a meter. its easier to say youre 6ft tall than to say 1.8288 meters or 182.88cm. Sure conversion is easier when you just have to move a decimal point but its harder to picture in your head 182.88cm than it is 6ft… especially when youve been using ft for longer than the metric system has been in existence.
“especially when youve been using ft for longer than the metric system has been in existence.”
Excuse me sir, how old do you think you are?
Sure you can’t imagine what 182cm mean (Why the decimal point? Seriously, you don’t have to be that “correct” just to make it look silly. No one is exactly 6ft high, and no one knows his height to more than a cm here, since that doesn’t help) since you don’t use that scale.
It works just like your ft work too, no one stacks standard lengths, you just know how tall 6ft are, because you know things that are that high. (Or that are half as high or something, you know, just the way comparing things work) And just because you can’t imagine how high XXcm are, it doesn’t mean it’s harder. It’s probably no difference if you’re used to it.
If anybody tells me he is 1.90m tall, I know exactly where I can put that, just like you can put your ft. And it’s silly to even try to claim something about it “being more complicated” since you would have to be grown up with the metric system to actually compare that. In which case you – like me – couldn’t say much about the imperial system.
So unless you’ve independently grown up on both of them without knowing the other (what’s impossible by definition) your opinion on what’s “easier to picture in your head” is worthless.
^ Hmm this and this and this.
And yes, i believe the metric system is slightly older than you are, except if you’re the Doctor of Jack Harkness which seems unlikely, given your apparent intelligence.
in other news, i actually do like day/month/year format. that is all.
This American prefers Year/month/date. Discuss
This german, too. It’s the logical order if you want to sort things (documents) by date. Any other measuring scale uses this system (greatest unit first). hour:minute
sixhundred-thirty-four etc…
year/month/date is good for organising documents because in numerical order it is also in chronological order. day/month/year is useful for every day things such as “what day is it?”, “when is it?” and so on because unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few months you should be able to remember the year, and with months its not all that hard to remember which one it is so days are usually the things people want to know so should come first. month/day/year and year/day/month are systems which don’t really help all that much with date keeping or anything at all really.
Aaaand here’s a vote for month/day/year
What about month/year/beef?
Second vote.
Ditto. Especially if I’m putting dates into file names. That way, an alphabetical sort puts them in chronological order. Why would I want to sort by month?!
If you business depends more on the month than the year?
Picnicking supplies sell better in spring/summer
Actually, you’re supposed to use yyyy-mm-dd. It’s been the international standard for decades.
Useful for file names like on photos. This human being approves.
Here I am, born and raised in a country that uses the “Smooth Sailing” system, and I think this is highly offensive. If you wanna communicate with other people, you gotta learn about them.
In the Portuguese language, we have SEVERAL verbal conjugations, which are ridiculously harder to deal with when comparated to the simple “Past\Present” system of the English language. Each culture have differences and we have to deal with them in order to live together.
Bitching is for lil’bitc**s. Remember that.
Sorry for the typos\Grammatical errors. And yeah, just got trollbait’ed.
i know what you mean, but this issue specifically is annoying because it’s used in college books :/
that’s what my brother told me.
0/10
also, this graph is just fun.
It’s about how one scale is more logical than the other, not about how all americans are stupid.
Nothing about this is offensive.
The verb tense system of the English language is actually one of its most complex parts. You have the bare form, which serves as one of the present tenses (except for the third person singular), as the complement of auxiliary words, as the imperative and subjunctive moods, and also as part of the infinitive. You have the third person singular. You have the simple past tense, the past participle and the present participle. You then have a boatload of auxiliary verbs, which you can use to construct additional tenses such as the future subjunctive…
I think it’s weird how English is the hardest language to learn, with all its rules having more exceptions than examples, loop holes and little naunces of strange sentence structure and son on, has somehow become the most widely spoken language in the world!
All natural languages have about the same complexity. English has more complex sentence structure, but has only vestigial remnants of declension and conjugation. English spelling is hard to learn, but makes it easier for well-educated speakers to recognize a Greek or Latin or other root in a strange English word, because the original foreign spelling is preserved.
A pox on both date systems. Put the most significant digit first! 2012-02-16. No risk of someone accidentally swapping the month and the day, because no one ever used 2012-16-02 as a system. It’s trivial to sort things by date, both for computers and humans. And it extends elegantly with times in 24-hour format (2012-02-16 13:47:11)
this.
PFF THIS IS ‘MERICA. WE DO THINGS DIFFERENT. SUCK IT.
correction:
THIZ HIR IZ ‘MERICA. WE DO WHAT WE WANT. F YA!
Id ussually think scew america and their bezarre ways but then i remember all good movies, series and most good stuff on the internet comes from it,so well have to get used to it.
its obvously the imperial system, not the standart… no culture over the sea? *ducksaway*
Duck saw Ay? What will happen to him?
Ay will be utterly shamed forever as the only ninja ever spotted by a duck.
Don’t let him die!
The date-format is highly annoying. What’s wrong with DD.MM.YYYY for letters and YYYYMMDD for sorting? What sense does any other way actually have? The image shows, how impractical it is…
I think it should be MM.YYYY.DD
We will switch to the Metric system as soon as the U.K., Japan & Australia switch to left hand drive “like the rest of the world” At least us being in the older system only really affect us unlike the existence of RHD cars which causes car companies to create stupid center mounted instrument clusters.
No we still wont switch to metric then. LOL
Why should we drive on the wrong side of the world? No wonder you guys find it so hard to drive manual (“stick shift”).
Yeah like the problems of conversion between metric and American systems never caused any, I don’t know, rockets to crash into the Moon…
I would like you to take a meter of wood and cut it precisely into three equal lengths.
What makes you think it’d be harder to do in centimeters then in any other metric? The length of wood will still be the same, it’s just easier to calculate the length of each piece in the metric system.
Also, Celsius doesn’t make such sense, neither does Fahrenheit. Kelvin makes a modicum of sense, but isn’t very practical. I’m sure the SI would be open to better alternatives though; they’re looking for things that make sense and are easy, not things that are traditional and arbitrary.
And don’t get me started on the date system.
easy… just take a meter of wood and cut it in 3,33cm each
Actually, it’d be 33.33333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333333… cm each.
Those are some nice numbers you got going on there but as an actual user of said system it would be 33.33cm.
lol your wrong it would be 33.33repeating cm because 33.33 * 3 does not equal a whole it will be .001 cm off
I would like to take a feet of wood and cut it precisely into five equal lenghts.
The worst argument ever.
^this
Take a yard of wood and cut it into 5
A meter of wood cut into 3 equal lengths would have to be cut at each 33 1/3 cm, NOT 33.33cm (33.33cm is too short.)
A foot of wood cut into 5 equal lengths would be cut at exactly every 2.4 inches; a yard cut into 5 equal lengths would be cut at exactly every 7.2 inches.
On the other hand, cut any of them into 71 equal lengths.
I don’t know how you cut wood, but measure the width of a saw blade.
No human is as precise as that would matter.
And if you let machines do that, they can calculate thirds, even if the scale can’t.
It’s just a stupid discussion that doesn’t make any sense.
For every possible thing you should cut, you can always measure any part of it out as precise as you need it to cut it, there’s no perfect cut either way.
Alright. It’ll be 33 cm each part, since I will lose approx a centimetre in the cutting.
it’s a shame that this is ruined by the person believing that 0 is where the Celsius system starts. now, instead of having to find a valid reason to defend Fahrenheit, all they have to do is point out that this small detail is wrong to claim the whole graph is void.
0 is the freeze temperature and 100 is the ebullition temperature
I wonder why Europeans make graphs like this, knowing that the only thing the imperial system is really only used for mile markers, and height and weight measurements. All sciences are taught and done in the metric system here, regardless of what the “official” system is.
Also, it’s Month, Day, Year, because when you say it out loud in english it’s “September 3rd”, though in other languages it’s different, like in Spanish it’s “Tres de Septiembre.”
the 3rd of september.
Yeah, but it’s much more common to say the month first.
It seems like people say the day first when talking about the past, but the month first when talking about the future/current date.
No it isn’t
*clap clap*
*clap clap*
*clap clap*
‘September 3rd’. Quicker than ‘the 3rd of September’.
If it is said as such, why is it said ‘The Fourth of July’ instead of July 4th?
Thats a holiday’s name… its an exception.
When you’re used to saying the ‘Xth of Y’, it’s not that much slower than ‘Y Xth’.
except you left out the “the” and yes its much slower.
Three sep.
I guess if you turned that around every time you actually say it, over the time of you’re life, you’d probably lose about an hour.
If you’re time is actually that important, you should make it a standard to just say 8-3 or 3-8 as in 9-11.
It’s much shorter that way, so it’s obviously better.
You can say it multiple ways. Many people overseas say it ‘the 3rd of September’ because that’s the way they write it. When I hear someone say the month first it sounds American to me, because the only time I hear it is on American TV. Personally, I think all the measurements are fine, it depends on what you want them for.
First of all: I’m not sure a European made this, perhaps it was actually an American, as the title indicates.
The other thing is: This clearly only insults the imperial system (and perhaps people that actually think it is better), not America in general.
I don’t see how any of you could be offended by that.
I’m german and so I know a lot about “stuff that should probably offend me”, since the internet is full of jokes indicating how we just drink beer all day, all look like cliché Bavarians or are nazis. And guess what? I just laugh about it when it’s funny, and don’t laugh when it’s not.
It’s just overusing prejudices and most people probably know that nothing of that is true, and those people who don’t, are too stupid to even care about them.
And now someone makes a somehow pretty funny graph showing that there are two scales and one of them is way less logical than the other and everybody acts as if it attacks him personally.
What the heck? I don’t even care where you use it. It’s probably perfectly okay to use it, when you’re used to it, still if you view it objectively, it does make less sense.
I don’t think all Americans are stupid because of this. No-one does. This graph just points something out that’s funny (at least to me). Period.
The Fourth of July.
And the United States does not and never has used the Imperial System.
If you’re arguing in terms of scientific calculations, you’re absolutely correct. However, measuring climate temperature is a bit nicer in Fahrenheit, since decimal places are mostly an afterthought.
As far as the date argument, are you really that stubborn? American system is pretty easy for filing things in an efficient order. That way, the first number you see is the month, which is how most things are filed, anyways.
The reason the metric system sucks is it has too wide of an increase to get to different levels. 1 deg c is almost 2 deg F. 1ft is 0.3048 meters or 30.48cm… so you end up with all these strange decimals which really makes things difficult when youre talking intermediate lengths. Plus its french so it automatically sucks.
It’s just a logical system for smart people who use their brain, sorry for you
As an American, I HATE the imperial system. Mostly because I cannot remember how many goddamn feet are in a mile.
Then it’s a good thing that, as an American, you don’t use the Imperial system.
And the reason that the number of feet in a mile is difficult is that there is no connection. Here’s the actual system.
1 link = 7.92 inches.
1 rod = 25 links = 198 inches = 16.5 feet
1 chain = 4 rods = 100 links = 66 feet
1 furlong = 10 chains = 660 feet
1 mile = 8 furlongs = 5280 feet
Except, in 1959, US surveyors refused to update from the old inch (1/39.37 meters) to the new inch (2.45 centimeters), so those figures are off by about a little more than 0.0002%. Some fun, eh?
Actually we are taught both here. And it really doesn’t take a genius to convert with the imperial system, it’s just not as uniform as the metric system. But I don’t understand why the rest of the world get so annoyed that we use the imperial system. How does that in any way affect your personal life? Just don’t come here and you won’t ever have to use it, problem solved. Don’t constantly b*tch about it as if we’re shoving it down your throats or something…….
when i want to order tools from USA to Europe. and the tools are inch-sized and when im for example fixing my car and have to calculate how much 13mm is in inches.
have you ever seen the sizes of ring spanners in imperial system? 7/8, 9/16, 15/32, 1/4, 1/8 etc etc..
It’s called reducing fractions. I hear the whole world does it. I also notice how all those denominators are powers of 2.
“when i want to order tools from USA to Europe”
Well there’s your problem.
So it’s the fault of America’s preferred system of measurement that you didn’t bother to check if the supplier carried metric tools when you ordered them from America? Any company that sells tools in the US usually always carries both metric and imperial. There are even sets sold that contain both metric and imperial tools.
we have metric tools here too bub. Just buy those instead of whining about not being able to divide by 2.
It’s extremely annoying when i play Pokémon, and want to know their height and weight, and it’s in Feet, Inches and Pounds.
This also applies to other games.
why would that be annoying? Most people can understand the length of their foot, the length of their middle knuckle on their first finger (inch), and the pound was derived from weighing carob seeds in ancient rome. A certain number of them (1728) were said to be a pound… if you had 144 of them you had an ounce… 1728/144 = 12 so that’s where we get the troy ounce (which is used in measuring precious metals)… just fyi.
Imperial is just retarded. 10 millimeters is a centimeter. 10 centimeters is 1 decimeter, 10 decimeter is a meter, and so on. Instead of:
“uhh oh yeah 1 foot was 12 inch, and 1 yard is 3 feet, and 1 mile is 1760 feet…”
Not to mention Fahrenheit. If it’s cold one day, and warmer the next. And it gets the same bit warmer the next day. Celsius would still be the same amount warmer, but Fahrenheit wouldn’t for some crazy inexplicable reason.
Face it, Metric is more logical than Imperial. It’s cold, hard fact.
“Not to mention Fahrenheit. If it’s cold one day, and warmer the next. And it gets the same bit warmer the next day. Celsius would still be the same amount warmer, but Fahrenheit wouldn’t for some crazy inexplicable reason.”
wat
Not to mention that 1 mile is 5280 FEET
Actually, it’s worse than that. Because US surveyors and mapmakers didn’t want to change when the International Inch was defined in 1959, a US mile is approximately 5280.01056 feet.
Teraku (what a name!) thinks Fahrenheit varies exponentially.
Please tell me how 10 is less arbitrary than 12.
we use a base ten numbering system. Also imperial does not use a standard base of 12, it varies, i.e 1ft = 12 in, but 5280ft to a mile
It’s just logical, why, have you 100 cent in a dollar, why we speak about cenutury deceny etc… why did you have thousend, hundred, it’s just a simple way
Then, to throw you off even more, there’s 16 ounces to a pound vs 1000 grams to a kilogram. Or 8 pints to a gallon vs 1000 millilitres to a litre (although that gets even more confusing, because there’s three different types of gallons).
I like that metric is all based around one, nice, round number (10) as opposed to imperial, which uses 8, 12, 16 (which admittedly have something in common in that they can all be divided by the number four) and gets confusing.
PS. There’s also the 14 pounds to the stone, but I think that’s more a Brit thing.
Re logic in Celsius: Note how 100°C is *not* twice as hot as 50°C. How logical is that?!
You can say the same for Fahrenheit though.
Yes; just pointing out that Celsius is NOT more “logical” than Fahrenheit. Neither is “logical” in light of an energy interpretation of temperature.
So then we’re back at simple convenience. 0–100 with lowest at pure water freezing and 100 at boiling is fine if that conveniently covers the range of temperatures you are likely to experience.
But if you live in a climate that systematically goes below the one, and you don’t regularly deal with things near the top end (unless you are boiling water and care about that temperature) then it could be considered inconveniently compressed. You’re everyday usage would be in the -20–30 range. If you add, oh, say, about 30 to those, and shorten up the distances a bit, you get back to a 0–100 range for most everyday usage…
I’ve lived most of my life in a European country that enjoys freezing temperatures about half of the year, and also uses Celcius. No, I don’t find it confusing or a waste of time having to say it’s MINUS 15 degrees outside. In fact, it’s very convenient to know when it’s below zero, there will be ice and snow outside, when it’s just above zero, the circumstances will be different. We actually have to look at the thermometer before going out to know what kind of gear to wear, our houses are built properly so it is possible to live in a climate like that.
And in summer we get temperatures of up to 35 degrees, so we do need the positives too…
You know kelvin, the celcius system is based on:
for ewemple 0°C = 273,5°K and 100°C=373,5°C
0°C= freeze temperature
100°C= Ebullition Temperature
That is the logic
metric youre 1.8288 meters… Imperial (or US standard) youre 6ft. Which is easier to contemplate in your head long decimals or whole numbers? Yeah metric is logical but its impossible to fathom without a ruler or calculator. Or maybe you like saying your d!ck is 6cm… sounds bigger that way doesnt it?
okay, I read some of your stuff now, you’re just stupid.
Don’t you just get how I could take something (like 2 meters) which would need a complicated decimal (or multi-unit) expression in the imperial system?
You are not 6ft tall. You actually round when you say that. Just like we would round when we say we’re 1,8m tall. It’s not as if anybody would care about a height difference of 2 cm.
Man, if I wouldn’t think stupid people are funny I’d probably actually be a little fed up after reading what you wrote.
If you’re a troll. I’d give you 7/10.
Metric your 1.9 meters… Imperial (or US standars) youre 6.2335958 feet or 6 ft and 2.8031496 inches. Which is easier to contemplate in your head ?
Stop saying retarded thing would you ?
Calculator? Everything is divisible by 10. It’s the easiest math ever.
ohkay…are you trolling or what? Fahrenheit does get the same bit warmer if there is a constant rate…have you done 7th grade math? Have you even been to 7th grade? We have our system, you can have whatever you want. Just try to not sound stupid….i think i lost a few brain cells for reading what you wrote.
Ok lets have some context here. Is it not much more likely that Teraku was trying to say that it gets the same amount hotter and colder no matter what system you use? I may be making an assumption here but from the name, english may not be their fist language.
While I much prefer the day/month/year format, the year/month/day is more convenient when putting thing in numerical order. I do this for backup folders for instance.
Agreed, this is the logical format. Every other system is built that way. Greatest unit first. hour -> minute, sixhundred-thirty-four etc…
HEY! REST OF THE WORLD! Our system was your system first. We have decided to keep it.
Evolution, oh yeah, you didn’t learn it at school
Wow, I never realized that your completely arbitrary temperature scale was better than ours. Fahrenheit used a briny ice solution that stabilizes its own temperature as 0, and then set the boiling point of water to be 180 *degrees* above the freezing point. 100 degrees makes no sense.
I don’t know about you, but where I live, the weather rarely gets below 0 °F or above 100 °F, so it’s great for weather, and it is much better at communicating small changes in temperature.
As for MM/DD/YYYY, that’s because the year changes so infrequently that it’s just sort of tacked onto the end; it’s an extension of MM/DD that we opted for over YYYY/MM/DD.
Also, way to single out the USA. We’re not the only country to use the British Imperial units, and we do use SI units for many things.
USA and the two other great nations on the planet use the “Imperial” system. Any idea those other two nations? World changers? Powerful, influential? Yep. You betcha. Liberia and Burma (Myanmar). Good to know those damn Yankees are up there with them.
The rest of the world wouldn’t complain so much if there was some tipping of the hat to the Metric system in “universal” things like Windows and other software that is supposedly translatable to the rest of the world. USA-based stuff ususally ignores any system but its own, or if there is some acknowledgement, they can’t even get the spelling right: prime example being METRES and not meters. Meters are for measuring something, not a unit of measurement (note the difference??). And while I’m whinging, it’s “killo-metres”, not “kil-LOM-ahters”. People don’t say “kil-LOG-rams”, do they?
Ah yes. The good ol’ USA, still sticking with a version of the Imperial units. Just like the other two world powers who have done the same – everyone else uses metric units. Which are those two countries, who are so influential? Yep. You guessed it! Liberia and Burma (Myanmar). So USA gets with the strength!!
What’s the problem? Mostly myopia. Anything that gets exported from USA elsewhere rarely ever gives a passing nod to metric units (Windows, anyone?) and if they do, they then try to force American spelling on us! For example, metres are spelled M E T R E S, not meters. Meters are things to measure with, not a unit OF measurement! How many hundreds of times do I have to change the spelling (IF a software program actually lets me).
Ah, and while I’m having a whinge, how about pronouncing those metric words properly? Since when was kilometres pronounced “kil-LOM-ahters”? It’s “KILLO-meeters”. You’d sound rather silly saying “kil-LOG-rams” wouldn’t you, or “mil-LIM-iters”, so if you are going to do us a favour (note spelling!) and speak in metric, at least be consistent.
Thanks!
A metricified Aussie
I’m with your pretty much entirely. Except the spelling: -re is NOT pronounced “ər”, it is more like “ray”. So if you are saying “meet-ər” you should spell it meter. If you are saying “met-ray”, then by all means, spell it metre.
Just trying to be consistent.
How many times do I have to say that the US system is /not/ the Imperial System or based on it? The US system and the Imperial System are both based on the informal and only half-standardized old English System, and, of the two, the US system is the older.
As to software, I long ago gave up on the Operating System of the Damned, but I’m fairly certain that it supports British English, if not specifically Australian. I know Mac OS X does. But Americans quite reasonably spell “meter” as we do because we see no good reason to copy our spellings from France. What was the point of Agincourt and Waterloo if good and C of E writers of roast-beef English must always be tugging their forelocks to the sex-mad, kochleophagous, orthographic Napoleons of l’Académie française?
On the other hand, you are right about pronouncing “kilometer”; the ISO does not pretend to choose how metric words are to be spelled or pronounced in various languages, but has requested that pronunciation in any one language be systematic.
I’m canadian and I actually…kinda found offensive the…slur…um…relatives….close friends….all in the US…. ._. yeaaaaah….
ANYWAYS, I also use the Month/Day/Year thing
AMERICA IS EVIL BECAUSE THEY DO THINGS DIFFERENTLY THAT BOTHERS NOBODY. AHHHH
You’re right. OP is butthurt.
arent you supposed to be working on HL3? stop browsing memebase and get back to work!
Being an engineer, I can tell you that having to convert from the archaic imperial system to real units is a good way to double the required time of a calculation.
Yes and a mistake in converting from imperial to metric caused a Boeing 767 to run out of fuel and glide to the ground. No one was hurt thanks to the heroic pilots. Thinking they were using imperial units of fuel, the plane carried half the amount and ran out mid flight. This was the famous Gimli Glider incident that happened in Canada.
And the Mars Climate Orbiter to crash.
FINALLY someone’s remembering that.
Thought i was the only one.
Which is funny because the FAA regulates that everyone use english when talking to the pilots and that they use US standard measurements when dealing with planes. In other words the metric system ki.lls people.
TBH We hate ounces (we like pounds though) no one in my family knows how much an ounce is. We don’t like any liquid measurements other than gallons. And we love miles, but absolutely hate kilometers.
Fail graph, Fahrenheit is based on the logical points of 0 as the freezing point for sea water and 100 as the temperature of the human body, exactly as arbitrary as Celsius. Kelvin is more logical, having a 0 point of no molecular movement. (though the unit increment is still arbitrary, being based on Celsius.)
The most logical order for dates is year, month, day, because this allows for correct sorting of dates.
As for the units of measurement, if your only argument is the ease of conversion, you’re doing it wrong.
But the human body is 96.8 Fahrenheit?
He used temperature of his wife and she was a slightly ill.
Actually the scale was originally fixed to have the approximate body temperature at 96 degrees, and he appears to have chosen 96 because 96-32 = 64, or 2^6.
Don’t you think “freezing/boiling pure water at 1 bar” is less arbitrairy than “a way to make ‘a cold temperature’ used a lot in that time”. Also just the scale annoys me alot… based on 2-3 different things alltogether while celsius is just pure water, freezing and boiling and then make it into a decimal system (since that just counts easy). Add to this that (almost) all SI units can be verified with eachother, that just makes it much easier. And quit bitching about Kelvin, that’s just the celsius scale with different numbers put on there :p
And there are problems coming from this, not for your average person, but still
For example working cross nation on certain projects has caused big (costly) mistakes to happen.
Finally I’d like to add that US people should just not be so stubborn and accept what most of the world is using anyway. I don’t know if there are things that we (I’m from Belgium) are using, but 60%+ of the world is not, but then I’d gladly change it, just for “world’s sake”. It will be a bit difficult at first, but so was for example the Belgian frank to Euro change.
Maybe we should start by forcing those annoying Britts to change to SI
no, I don’t find Celsius any less arbitrary. Celsius also isn’t SI, Kelvin is SI.
I’m not making any comment on SI vs. Imperial, just pointing out that the graph presented is BS.
I didn’t even look at the BS of using millimeters instead of centimeters in order to get an flag graph where cm is the more commonly used and comparable unit of measurement.
All of your units are absurd. Everything should be measured in quanta and notated in binary. It is the future. Resistance is futile.
Who gives a crap about who uses what system of measurements? Just use whatever you’re taught.
except there are instances of backwater re-re’s converting from metric to us standard improperly and causing plane crashes.
A note: while I will not argue for the imperial system in many respects, it does have the added ability to have units reasonable for things being measured. For example, decimeters exist, but nobody uses them (for above poster’s notice: 10^-1 is deci, 10^1 is deka). OTOH, inches, feet and yards serve the purposes of cm, tens of centimeters (v. decimeters, since no-one uses decimeters), and meters, respectively; similarly, miles serve the same purpose as km, just without the nigh-useless dekameters and hectometers. No comments on other systems, with which I am less familiar, except with temperature, on which I will comment: temperature is a unit derived from entropy; we should use a unit derived from a standardized unit of entropy.
Also, the metric system uses base 10. Everyone should use base 12. Base 12 is better, for a variety of reasons. The only reason we use base 10 is because we have 10 fingers. Base 12 would make for much easier math. Therefore, Imperial is better, because we have a factor of 12 in our system.
The military and science jobs record dates and measurements the way the rest of the world does. I don’t see how one date format makes any more sense than the other. The US version records from smallest to largest increment. I suppose when you arbitrarily assign a pyramid, it does make your way seem more correct. You got us on the rest of it though.
Can’t tell if genuinely believes that a day is longer than a month or just made a silly error.
He’s talking about largest numbers in each slot, maximum month/day is 12/31 follow? So the smallest number will generally be 1st, followed by larger, followed by largest, I always knew this date system made sense to me, now I know why lol
You know, if Europeans want Americans to change their system, they just have to adopt the system we currently have. We’d change away from it in a heartbeat then
Even SI units aren’t perfect. The kilogram hasn’t been defined as a formula that is is reproducible and is still defined by a physical object, a block of platinum alloy. It keeps changing in weight so countries constantly have to trim there to match the global standard in paris. So nobodies perfect and while si units are easier to work with the american system isn’t wrong, its just a different.
Actually it’s just wrong
Maybe not wrong, per se, but objectively worse.
The imperial system was born of weighing seeds in ancient rome. 1728 carob seeds = 1 pound. Why 1728? i have no idea but Im sure they had a reason in ancient rome.
Why the hell does everyone think that a kg is defined as the mass of that platinum block? It’s the mass of one litre of water at STP.
No, it’s defined as the mass of the International Prototype Kilogram in Paris. The gram was defined in 1795 terms of the mass of a cubic centimetre of water, but this was replaced only 4 years later by a physical piece of metal with a mass of 1 kilogram. (The current prototype was made in 1879, and adopted as the definition in 1899).
and a kilogram is the mass of one litre of water at STP. beach please
to lazy to check if this has already been said, but the whole temp thing, 0 on the F scale is 0 because that is the temp at which salt water freezes, which when the scale was created was basically the only water source available, plus the majority of all water on earth is salt water
Not “salt water”. Equal parts of ice, water, and ammonium chloride, because it takes and holds the temperature automatically. Then he set 32° as equal parts of ice and water and 96° as body heat. Then, as I’ve already said, a later adjustment was made to stretch the boiling point of water to 212° to make the difference an even 180°.
The U.S. system is stupid. (I am from the US, also.)
arent you supposed to be doing your math homework right now young man? Get off memebase and do your homework or so help me god I’ll come up there and spank you till you cant sit down!
Yea the “standard” system sucks, but in celsius, 0 is NOT base level. Learn about Kelvin, people.
Kelvin? He’s my neighbour. Mows the lawns sometimes.
Its the rest of the worlds fault for letting us call it standard, also AMERICA
F YEAH
the imperial system has been around since ancient rome… the metric system was invented in france in like 1798… so the imperial system is the traditional way of doing things and would you look at that its used by the country with all the money… strange.
No, the Imperial System has been around since 1824.
Are your serious. Do you really see a relation between how rich USA are and the fact they use imperial system on a daily basis?
Following your logic, it is because of the imperial system too that USA nuked Hiroshima during World War II, right?
No, the US does not use the Imperial system, and never did.
Have you trouble, what’s your problem, you know that it’s china wich have the more money in the world. You have got the internet, use it
As much as I agree with the premise, they still have a hypocritically-flawed measurement scale here. Zero is not the base of the Celsius scale. 20C is not twice as hot as 10C. They really should have used the superior Kelvin scale, as it has an absolute zero, and statements of relativity can be made (20K is twice as hot as 10K). How about a unit of measurement for that beam in your eye, cocky Euros!
you know that °Celcius is based on °Kelvin or you are just…
bitches don’t know about my kips, psi, ksi, Msi, and Rankine scale
Using Month>Day>Year is like going
Minutes>Seconds>Hours (for example recording a lap time, it would be 43m02s01h)
It’s illogical.
no actually its not. Its said that way for speed and because the months only go up to 12. So you can have 12/30/2000 which is ascending order. Likewise its faster to say december thirtieth than it is to say its the thirtieth of december.
So speed is the only reason? Then why don’t you just cut it down to 7-23?
Your arbitrary system isn’t like my arbitrary system! I will call you dumb, masking my racism at the fact that your country has more blacks, and I, as a European, just can’t stand that!
Butthurt racist Eurotrash detected.
T-t-t-trollbait!
ha ha ha nice
101st comment ! Screw the metric system !
I’m from the United States, and while I found the metric system to be WAY easier to work with in school (civil engineering degree here) out in the world it’s feet, inches, miles, gallons and pounds.
The New York State DOT came out with metric specifications and details about ten years or so ago, but the contractors who actually go out and BUILD things had no idea how to convert the units, couldn’t afford (or didn’t want) to buy metric tools, and a lot of projects got severely effed up. Now they’re back to feet and inches.
The imperial unit system is just so entrenched in the States everywhere, I don’t see it changing any time soon. It would cost an enormous amount of money to convert all our road signs, etc. and the country just cannot afford to make such an expenditure now or probably ever.
No, the Imperial system has /never/ been used in the United States. It wasn’t even invented until 1824.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_units
I’m British and I much prefer the Imperial system. It’s far easier to relate to in a real context.
You must live in London, where your back YARD is about 90cm wide… right?
the one thing I dont like about the British is their money. Its called the pound because its based on the value of a pound of silver. So the money is called a pound sterling but its shortened to pound…so what did they do? they stopped using pounds for weight and moved to stone … which is just strange … 13lbs to a stone? really?
The stone was set at 14 pounds because it had a number of different values and 14 seemed to be the best compromise for a standard. The name is thought to come from a commonly encountered fossil.
But “stone” never replaced “pound” as a weight except for weighing heavy things where it was more convenient. Nowadays it’s not used at all except, by long tradition, to express the weights of human beings.
14. And stones are used for weight of people for the same reason many units are still used in various applications: convenient numbers, most adults being somewhere between 10 and 20 stone.
I think this is the first graph I’ve LOLed.
And I always wondered why you americans use MM/DD instead of DD/MM.
So this one time I had a patient who weighed 25 pounds. All medications for pediatrics (and medicine in general) are measured in metric. So I had to spend precious time converting pounds into kilograms. Now, with practice, it is a very fast conversion to an estimated 11 kilos. But you know what would have been a better use of those 1-5 seconds? ADMINISTERING THE MEDICINE.
The patient could just have been weighed on a scale that read in kilos.
I’m 1.68m tall and about 68kg in mass. I have to keep checking what those are in imperial since I never got used to them. I did get used to miles per hour, horsepower and pounds feet of torque by watching all sorts of car shows (Top Gear, Motortrend, FasLane Daiily, etc.)
Screw this graph. In Britain we change between imperial and metric at random.
As Anubis said, metric is typically used in colleges in the US, but out of college it’s more imperial. It’s a mix.
There are certainly advantages to the metric system, but many of them are ruined anyway. A person from a metric country will typically answer “How much do you weigh?” in kilograms. That’s really irritating. Why have Newtons if you won’t use them?
I see no advantage of Celsius over Fahrenheit. A monkey can switch between them, and using Kelvin or Rankine is just as easy. Honestly, remembering 32F for water freezing is pretty easy, and I don’t actually need to measure the temperature of the water for spaghetti noodles. I prefer Fahrenheit simply because you get more resolution on actual temperature change without using decimals. It’s just a flavor thing, but since I’m a thermal engineer I get to do what I want.
I work with watts per square inch sometimes. I work with a lot of odd combinations because that’s how it works. The guys in the machine shop who build something want inches, but the customer wants heat in Watts. A fuel tank volume is reported in cubic inches, but the mass of the fuel is in kilograms.
The most ridiculous unit is a BTU, which is a British Thermal Unit. Yes, Americans use it, but we are pretty clearly not the creators of it. On second thought, I take that back. A ton of cooling is more absurd. It’s the latent heat of melting one ton of ice. Still, it’s easy to convert to whatever units you want.
The average person will use a unit and never have to worry about converting it. A person in a science field should have no problem converting between any units at all. The biggest problem I have with imperial units are the wrenches (spanners). “Half inch is too small, let’s try 5/8ths… no, how about 7/32nds?” is an absurd thing to say. I solve this problem by only owning Japanese cars.
As far as the date goes… who gives a damn?
who gives a damn about the date? someone who thinks you wrote them a check dated for january sixth and you wrote it for june first…
I think you just cut the most important point of the discussion: In an everyday situation, while one scale may be more “logical” than the other, it doesn’t really matter what you use, since both are easy to anyone who grew up with it, but it’s really stupid to live in a world that is as globalized as it is, but still using different systems. If I talk to someone on the internet and he tells me something about miles or feet I always have to convert, because I can’t imagine how much that stuff is.
No matter which system you prefer: It is pretty ridiculous to have different systems for everyday use.
Great post, btw.
crap is going down
Rest of the World: Falling apart at the seams.
America: Only nation which matters.
Enough said.
0/10
troll harder
ascending order for dates as its faster, numbers like 12 and 8 are used as they can be divided by 2. F over C as the temperature fluctuates a bit more here. metric is better for engineering and such where it really matters to be the precise, feet yards and miles as they are easier to comprehend when talking about distance,length, width and height. also, it might be said that we’re smarter (by however much) with that system as its harder 2 do thins with 12 like divide and you can really see the change when adding/multiplying. lemme kno if i missed anything
Easier to comprehend (I will just have to take your word on that) until you talk to someone who hasn’t grown up using them.
this.
It’s just subjective. You’re better in what you learn and it’s probably not much easier learning one or the other.
Yay, let’s make a graph that will surely result in American vs rest of the world comments! Result: ACHIEVED.
Pat yourself on the back OP. You must be proud.
boohoo, people are upset, Day is first because its the smallest divisible unit involved in calculating the time of year. Next is month because its larger and then year.
And yet, We’re still right, and they’re still wrong. Go figure.
Actually, both celsius and farhenheit are arbitrary. Kelvin would be the ideal scale. The order of the date doesn’t matter really. But metric is actually better, and i’d like to think most Americans are familiar enough with the metric system to use it.
We, here in the UK, used to do pretty much as the US does now – with the added massive hinderance of the old currency system we had, which involved 240 pence to the old pound… decimalisation was resisted for years because it was ‘too complicated’.
Personally, I think the Imperial system is better for day to day, but everything technical should of course be done in the most precise manner, which would be metric. In day to day matters, does it really matter if you can easily move a decimal point if there’s no convenient way of describing the measurement? Sure you COULD use decimeters… but let’s get real. Imperial was built around daily use so the increments make sense, temps where I live often dip near 0F in winter and can peak around 100F in summer, feet inches gives a more precise height for the average person, etc. And as has been pointed out, both temperature systems are completely arbitrary. Someone else nailed it on the head though, metric should be base 12, not 10. 12 makes so much more mathematic sense, 10 is as arbitrary as anything else, basic math should be base 12.
Feet Inches give a more precise height? What?
Inches is the smallest increment, and it’s 2.5 cm. In other words, if you wanted to describe someone who’s 5 feet and one centimeter tall, you’d be stuck.
Meters are significantly more accurate.
Whoops, not precise, meant concise. It’s accurate to an inch, which isn’t too bad, and uses nice numbers, not a hundred something cm or 1 point something meters.
Why would you care if they’re one centimeter over five feet?
Who even takes the time to measure someone to figure that out??
If you’re standing around with a measuring tape, making sure that someone is precisely the right amount of centimeters, then you really need a hobby.
As we spent years with learning English as a second language, people from The States at least should learn to think in international metric systems. Especially useful if you plan to leave The States at least once in your life:)
well thank god many of them don’t plan to.
That’s because over half of them don’t even know there’s anything beyond the East Coast and West Coast.
Also, I’d just like to add this little ditty:
Twelve inches a foot,
Two pints a quart,
Why don’t we make it easy?
You know this is why there will never be peace in the world we are all arguing over very stupid systems that very very old men (maybe women not sure on the dets.) came up with a very long long time ago to be useful with science, Cant we all just agree to disagree and move on
^
Kelvin > Celcius
Kelvin starts at zero, celcius starts at water freezeing.
Are you stupid?
No, he’s quite right. 0 kelvins is no heat at all. 0° Celsius is 273.15 kelvins.
I have nothing to say, so… desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu desu
you called desu~~~~~
We need to combine England’s use of the metric system with America’s use of “not stapling pointless extra vowels on to words”. By our powers combined!
Oh, the controversy.
Celsius is the scale based on water’s freezing and boiling temperatures (0=freezing, 100=boiling), whereas Fahrenheit’s scale is based on 100 being roughly 37 degrees Celsius, or estimated average body temperature. You silliot.
No, Fahrenheit’s original scale was based on 96° being body heat. Later, that anchor was discarded to make 212° the boiling point, making the difference between 32° and 212° an even 180°.
I have a feeling all of you have been trolled.
FAIL! In the UK we use miles too, not just in the US
Yo, i’mma letchu finish, but Kelvin is the best temperature scale of all time. OF ALL TIME!
Metric system SUCKS!!!!!!!!
Apparently there are still people here who don’t get this.
The Imperial System was devised in 1824. The American Revolution ended in 1776. The two systems are not the same. They weren’t at all the same until 1959, when the new International Inch and International Pound were established, and even that wasn’t complete, because US surveyors refused to accept the International Inch (exactly 2.54 centimeters) and stuck with the old US Inch (exactly 10000/3937 centimeters), so although the inches, feet, and yards, are the same, links, rods, chains, furlongs, miles, and acres are still different.
And no attempt at all was made to harmonize the gallon, quart, etc., which are still very different, and aren’t even structured alike. (A US pint has 16 US fluid ounces; an Imperial pint has 20 Imperial fluid ounces—the fluid ounces aren’t the same, either.)
You want to talk about the stupidity of the US Conventional System, go right ahead. But if you say the US uses the Imperial System, it just proves you don’t have a clue.