'Pokémon Go' Is Forcing Americans to Learn the Metric System
288 replies, posted
[QUOTE=ZachPL;50708070]Knowing the day before the month just doesn't make sense.
--
its the 14th
only 11 days till christmas!
no it's july
oh you should've said that first[/QUOTE]
You rarely forget what month it is anyway. There is no way the example you pulled is going to happen.
[QUOTE=TheJoker;50708104]None of the schools I went to never taught metric. It was all lbs, Fahrenheit and other stuff.[/QUOTE]
Sorry to hear that :v:
Not too late to learn it!
Most guesswork regarding dates is nullified by the leading zero. Obviously, that is grammatically unacceptable in most languages, but for mutual understanding it's usually whatever, and most computer systems use it.
The measuring system, however, is fucking retarded. Miles are alright but the rest is a clusterfuck.
Still, surely a lot of american people know how to use metric. You have to learn it in school for physics, chemistry etc. so it isn't as abstract as this article wants to portray the whole OMG AMERICANS LEARNING METRIC thing is.
[QUOTE=Pretiacruento;50708095]We use that, only backwards.
Today it's 14/7/2016. Deal with it :v:[/QUOTE]
As Alice said, biggest units to the left make the most sense. It's how it's done everywhere else. You don't have ones-tens-hundreds, nor do you time by seconds:minutes:hours.
[QUOTE=Ogris;50708115]Most guesswork regarding dates is nullified by the leading zero. Obviously, that is grammatically unacceptable in most languages, but for mutual understanding it's usually whatever, and most computer systems use it.
The measuring system, however, is fucking retarded. Miles are alright but the rest is a clusterfuck.
Still, surely a lot of american people know how to use metric. You have to learn it in school for physics, chemistry etc. so it isn't as abstract as this article wants to portray the whole OMG AMERICANS LEARNING METRIC thing is.[/QUOTE]
not to mention liquid measurement
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/JkIMpjE.png[/IMG]
this blows my fucking mind
[QUOTE=Erfly;50708044]I'm still disappointed that the metric system uses tonnes rather than Megagrams[/QUOTE]
Likely because milligrams already take up the "mg" abbreviation, so it might end up causing confusion.
[del]Sure micrograms also exist, but that's not exactly a frequently encountered unit.[/del] snip dumb
[QUOTE=Pretiacruento;50708110]Sorry to hear that :v:
Not too late to learn it![/QUOTE]
i'd love to but it's really not that simple, imperial is a subconcious habit at this point
[QUOTE=Aetna;50707971]Yes please. As a home diy-er/mechanic, I'd much prefer if standard would fuck off already. Talk about the most convoluted system of measurement.[/QUOTE]
But when you use tools, are the wrenches rated in mm, or inches?
2 1/4 in... even the notation sounds backwards (to me)
[QUOTE=Grandzeit;50708127]Likely because milligrams already take up the "mg" abbreviation, so it might end up causing confusion.
Sure micrograms also exist, but that's not exactly a frequently encountered unit.[/QUOTE]
μg.
[QUOTE=For No Reason;50708019]As an American I'm honestly surprised when someone doesn't know both imperial and metric honestly[/QUOTE]
Define "know" because I totally understand the difference between a kilometer to a dekameter to a millimeter, but I can't visualize a decimeter or how far 20 km is like I can visualize a foot or how fare 20 miles are.
Wait, isn't the international date format YYYY-MM-DD though? Technically we're (mostly) all in the wrong here :v:
[url]http://www.w3.org/QA/Tips/iso-date[/url]
[QUOTE=Pretiacruento;50708132]But when you use tools, are the wrenches rated in mm, or inches?
2 1/4 in... even the notation sounds backwards (to me)[/QUOTE]
they sell tools that use both
most of the time there are different sized tools for imperial and metric
[QUOTE=Ducksink;50708080]Actually, 100 meters is equal to about 60 double steps(where both feet have completed 1 cycle)[/QUOTE]
Ah, good catch!
[QUOTE=Ogris;50708135]μg.[/QUOTE]
oh fuck me. :v:
So much for having had toxicology.
Also, I'm sure American doctors measure dosages in ml and mg... but everything else is probably measured in pounds.
Makes no damn sense!
[QUOTE=Pretiacruento;50708110]Sorry to hear that :v:
Not too late to learn it![/QUOTE]
At this point in time I think it is. I'm nearing 30 yrs old and my memory is getting worse by the year.
[QUOTE=Pretiacruento;50708086]For us, it's the other way around. Why would you put the month before the day? It's literally the international ISO notation, just backwards.
DD-MM-YYYY.
Super simple and makes a ton of sense, IMO.[/QUOTE]
except it has been shown and proven time and time again that this format is actually horrible and makes things very confusing?? lmao why do people have stupid levels of pride in something as basic and arbitrary as a measurement system or how to tell time
i don't see people bitching that one language is superior to the next so who gives a fuck, why do people go out of their way to argue metric vs. imperial when the world has worked just fine with both for so many years (except for the gimli glider)
[QUOTE=ZachPL;50708070]Knowing the day before the month just doesn't make sense.
--
its the 14th
only 11 days till christmas!
no it's july
oh you should've said that first[/QUOTE]
That's one hell of a bad example
[QUOTE=Toyhobo;50708108]You rarely forget what month it is anyway. There is no way the example you pulled is going to happen.[/QUOTE]
in writing?? or talking in literally any other tense than the present?
[QUOTE=FFStudios;50708169]except it has been shown and proven time and time again that this format is actually horrible and makes things very confusing?? lmao why do people have stupid levels of pride in something as basic and arbitrary as a measurement system or how to tell time
i don't see people bitching that one language is superior to the next so who gives a fuck, why do people go out of their way to argue metric vs. imperial when the world has worked just fine with both for so many years (except for the gimli glider)[/QUOTE]
Confusing [I]for you[/I] maybe, I don't see how you could not grasp
YYYY-MM-DD
and
DD-MM-YYYY
Does that confuse you? :v:
[QUOTE=TheDrunkenOne;50708126]not to mention liquid measurement
[IMG]http://i.imgur.com/JkIMpjE.png[/IMG]
this blows my fucking mind[/QUOTE]
To be fair, we really only use all those weird units in food and cooking. Still dumb, but everywhere else stuff is measured in purely in gallons and quarts, or the metric system: usually both. You'll get laughed out of the building if you try to use cups or tablespoons in a lab or engineering environment.
Either way, thanks to Pokemon, most 'muricans can be a little less dumber now, so that's a good thing :v:
[QUOTE=FFStudios;50708178]in writing?? or talking in literally any other tense than the present?[/QUOTE]
The example he pulled is literally in the present. if some asks you when is x holiday you add in both month and day but if someone asks you what's todays date you don't really say oh its x/x/20xx
I still see the purpose in using Fahrenheit for temperature. Celsius is measured in relation to water's freezing and boiling points, but Fahrenheit is based more around human perception. 32 degrees is really cold, 100 degrees is really hot. Humans like it right around 70. It's no good for measuring stuff for chemistry or cooking, but for weather? Hell yeah. Why limit our range of temperature to 40 units?
[QUOTE=FFStudios;50708169]except it has been shown and proven time and time again that this format is actually horrible and makes things very confusing?? lmao why do people have stupid levels of pride in something as basic and arbitrary as a measurement system or how to tell time
i don't see people bitching that one language is superior to the next so who gives a fuck, why do people go out of their way to argue metric vs. imperial when the world has worked just fine with both for so many years (except for the gimli glider)[/QUOTE]
except there is a standard for dates and it isn't the american one, because the american one is retarded
and metric + imperial hasn't worked fine, a space probe has literally crashed because of the imperial system
-snip-
[QUOTE=TheJoker;50708165]At this point in time I think it is. I'm nearing 30 yrs old and my memory is getting worse by the year.[/QUOTE]
Make some metric friends and start talking about the weather and such. You'll have to learn the metric system fairly well if you don't want to confuse them with measurements they don't understand. That's what I've taken to doing and while I'm definitely not a master at it (though it's not like I mention temperature or anything often to begin with) I can fairly accurately at least estimate the conversion anymore.
[QUOTE=Pretiacruento;50708184]Confusing [I]for you[/I] maybe, I don't see how you could not grasp
YYYY-MM-DD
and
DD-MM-YYYY
Does that confuse you? :v:[/QUOTE]
Actually DD-MM-YYYY is very confusing for Americans when written using only digits if the day of the month is no higher than 12 since it would look identical to the American standard. YYYY-MM-DD however isn't confusing at all. It's both logical and not easily mixed up with our own standard. Take, for example, the following: 01/06/2016. In Americanese this would be January 6th of 2016. In Metricanese this would be June 1st of 2016. But when written like that you can't outright tell the difference between the two unless there's some other telling factor where you come across that. On the other hand 2016/01/06 would be impossible to get mixed up with.
[QUOTE=redBadger;50708049]Sorry but month/day/year is infinitely superior.
Everything else is a different story[/QUOTE]
Even I can say it's not.
"Y the Xth" my ass
americans prefer imperial because its engrained in our populace, as is our date formats and similar
its a culture thing at this point
[QUOTE=TheDrunkenOne;50708010]why are muricans still using imperial anyway? it's a retarded system[/QUOTE]
It's retarded but the scaling is ideal for just day-to-day use.
Fahrenheit's numbers come out nicer than Celsius when you're just talking about ambient temperature 100F is "oh fuck it's hot", 100C is "oh fuck im dead"
70F is "this is nice", 70F is "oh fuck im still dead"
I'll give out temperatures and such in Fahrenheit when talking to someone, but if I'm actually doing mathematics I work in Celsius and other metric formats except in the odd cases where Imperial is more easy/readily found such as in HVAC or brake power calculations.
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