But there's a lot of money in staying with the imperial system, and betting against the money usually gives longish odds.

It doesn't help that we interchange between decimal and fractional inch. From using metric a lot I normally go with decimal inch. But since my industry is related to building construction, a lot of the plans and machine patterns use fractional inch. And after 20 years my brain is better tuned to metric for a lot of this stuff. Myself, I just wish we'd dump fractional inch and go with decimal inch.

Then again, "Hey, man, hand me that point six two five socket, would ya?"

Conveniently, on the tool side many regular sizes are really close. So that 5/8" socket is practically a 16mm tool. 3/4" is a 19mm, and lots of others also work out very close. But do I ever hate it when customers cram a standard screw in a metric hole...

Speaking of which, some genius decided that there needs to be two different unrelated standards for fasteners. Half-inch #9? WTF is that? I can at least figure out what a "1/4 - 20" is: 1/4" shaft with 20 threads per inch. But I still prefer the metric version: shaft size, and spacing between the threads.

It has one area in which it is logical but, it's not something that people commonly do and it doesn't necessitate the use of measures that are standardized on weird things.

The metric system allows you to have all sorts of crazy units without requiring a lot of effort to learn them. The cost though is that none of the measures makes any real sense. A meter has the same issue that a yard does. They're too long to be of practical use. You wind up having to convert them to decimals or engage in other adjustments.

The CM because it's 100th of a meter has the opposite problem. It's really too small for practical use. I can easily estimate an inch using my finger, but I can't really do that with a centimeter. The best I can do is that a CM is roughly half the width of my pointer finger.

The foot is about the length of a foot or can be related to the actual length of ones foot without too much trouble. But, ti's also a rather nice length for things as it's long enough that you don't need to have too many of them, but it's also short enough to where you don't have to have to always be dealing with fractions.

The point though is that the imperial units are ones that are much more easily related to real life. Yes, they do require a bit more education to use properly, but they're much more intuitive once you do.

The other thing is that we can and do decimalize the imperial measures when convenient. I've personally used Engineering measuring tapes that deal in 10ths of feet so you have 10 1.2" markings per foot. The cars all use decimalized miles for their odometer.

With the metric system though, you can't start using halves and thirds and still have something that makes any sense at all. If you go with 1/3 of a meter now you've got something that's awkwardly long and doesn't really relate to any of the other measures very well.

TL:DR the people who think the metric system is more logical or easier are mostly people who don't understand how the imperial system works , have never paid attention to what they're doing with the measurements or haven't used both systems long enough to get comfortable with them. In the years I was using the metric system, it never made anything I was doing easier, except for science. Outside of science, the metric system doesn't make anything easier. Most of the time it's a draw, but when it's not a draw the imperial measures usually win.
Honestly, it really doesn't. For science and technology, it does, however for daily living it doesn't. And that makes sense, the imperial measures were pretty much invented for things people do in daily living. The SI units that the metric system uses were designed for science.

The result is that imperial measures suck balls for science and the metric system is rarely the easiest system of measure for daily living.

I can't remember which but it's like 2.5 CM to an inch... (something like that)

Although i agree having an intermediate stand-in that's like 20-25CM (7-9 inches), it wouldn't fight the system and provide a solution for if you needed it.

I'm reminded of Azu-manga Daio, One of the characters asks if the tall (athletic) girl broke/grew past 170CM and she said she did... But why that's a bad thing I'm not sure, hell 175 seems easier to remember than two parts of 5 feet 9 inches (for me). If it's more accurate and in common usage, the too long/short thing goes away as you get used to it, I'm sure things would adapt quite rapidly to the more common lengths after a while be it for new roads and city blocks, or measuring our height and clothes.

Relevant xkcd.

People claim that. But, apart from science and technology, I haven't ever encountered a situation where using the metric system made my life any easier because of the superiority of the system. The only times it's made my life easier was when I was having to conform to what the other people around me were doing.

And no, the too long/ too short thing never goes away. It gets easier, but it doesn't get easier than just using a proper system of measure. It's the wrong system of measure for the use. Just like using imperial measures for science doesn't really ever become convenient, metric measures never come into their own for the things people do in daily living.

I see people making lame assertions like that you have to get used to it or that it's more logical, but with the years I've spent working with the system, I have yet to uncover any evidence that it's true.

As for height goes, if inches and feet is too complicated, just use inches. That 5' 9" becomes 69" , it's basically the same thing that they do in the metric system. Or you just decimalize the number.
Yeah, well just wait until the come after me with those metric pitchforks.

In Romania there are several common products which are sold at bags of 1 kg: sugar, rice, wheat flour, corn flour. I can only think of one thing sold here at half kilo (500g): wheat semolina (I had to use google translate), also found at 250g bags.

The only superiority is the easy way of transforming 1m in mm or km. Other than that is the same thing as feet and inch, it's hard to estimate all of them (because feet has different size depending on person and so on).
I wouldn`t be against using inch if it was part of a decimal system of measurement.

And handball is played by walking on your hands?

I have a mechanical engineering buddy who, fresh out of college, saved the company millions by realizing that a design had a bunch of impossible rectangles b/c the left half was designed in Germany and the right half in America and nobody wrote down their units.


10 fingers. Just can't beat it.

When we meet those fabled twelvetoes, we'll be blown away by their mathematical prowess.

For the song: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_uJsoZheTR4

Come on rtcvb32, that's obvious XD :P

Programmers have 16 fingers (1-F) ;-)

If were going with smart answers, then we have 8, and two thumbs :o)

And really, can you type in Hexadecimal, that would be quite a feat.

What do you mean, nightcrawler.0x1E8?

Out of cheese error, redo from start...

(Hex from Discworld).