One way to push the U.S. toward metric right now

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For common usage the English system is just fine. For scientific and technical applications and uses metric should be ordained. The journals will not publish articles unless the use the SI (aka MKS) system.

The government has no constitutional authority to mandate the MKS system. Usage and custom alone in the technical, engineering and scientific fields is sufficient to force the use of MKS even on the unwilling.

In college math, we talked about the famous A&W burger case.

That Americans believed 1/4 > 1/3, because "4" is a bigger number.

Gizmodo:

"One of the most vivid arithmetic failings displayed by Americans occurred in the early 1980s, when the A&W restaurant chain released a new hamburger to rival the McDonald's Quarter Pounder. With a third-pound of beef, the A&W burger had more meat than the Quarter Pounder; in taste tests, customers preferred A&W's burger. And it was less expensive. A lavish A&W television and radio marketing campaign cited these benefits. Yet instead of leaping at the great value, customers snubbed it".

"Only when the company held customer focus groups did it become clear why. The Third Pounder presented the American public with a test in fractions. And we failed. Misunderstanding the value of one-third, customers believed they were being overcharged. Why, they asked the researchers, should they pay the same amount for a third of a pound of meat as they did for a quarter-pound of meat at McDonald's. The "4" in "¼," larger than the "3" in "⅓," led them astray".

http://gizmodo.com/whats-bigger-1-3-pou ... 1611118517

I don't think you're wrong, but of course, I'm prejudiced. (who me?)

If the world was interested only in efficiency we'd all be speaking Esperanto. And Wikipedia offers: "Esperanto is seen by many of its speakers as an alternative or addition to the growing use of English throughout the world, offering a language that is easier to learn than English"....

....and I've known this to be true my very very very long very long entire long (long) life.

Does anyone think (for example) the peoples of China will be giving up their native dialects for Esperanto any time soon to be more efficient.....OR IS THERE AN ELEMENT OF NATIONAL PRIDE INVOLVED? Although England finally discontinued drinking "Pints" (I believe this has happened) I believe it was for nothing that they sacrificed part of their heritage. A shame, and absolutely nothing to show for it...just another "The EU will be a fabulous party for all" type of false promise (perhaps the folks in Brussels were more pleased with the party?).

If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

If it is so efficient and demonstrably better then people would use it, converting however is just one big ass hassle for no real benefit for most people. Maybe the government should think about paying us in cash to learn lol

The standard system is a nightmare for hands on work, when I'm trying to figure out which tool to use, the last thing I want to do is ratio math. Don't get me wrong, I understand ratios, but adding that step of deciphering them vs simply picking an integer (with metric tools) makes me wish we'd leave the imperial system already.

I'm not for forcing it on anyone, but the metric system really is better, especially for kitchen work. When I'm making a recipe and I decide to make it 50% bigger, for example, instead of trying to convert a bunch of pounds and ounces and spoon sizes, I can just multiply the grams by 150%, which is much simpler and less likely to lead to errors. It's even easier scaling down, as calculating 23% of a kilo is a hell of a lot easier than 23% of a pound. That's not even getting into feet and yards and miles...

Wrong.

Laws and policies as they are currently set up, like the requirement that both metric and customary units occur on labeling, the use of customary units on road signs, and giving the temperature in Fahrenheit, prevent those of us who want to convert from doing so. Also, the constant social use of customary prevents us from doing that, too.

Which units you use in daily life depends much less on individual factors and much more on social and political factors. If we are being led to convert, however, there may be some bickering for a while but we'd ultimately convert and move on, and really that's how it should be done. Honestly, why do you think the Framers explicitly gave Congress the power to "fix the Standard of Weights and Measures" (U.S. Const., Article I Section ? The government plays an important role here.

It is amazing the opposition to amending the Fair Labeling and Packaging Act to allow permissive metric-only labeling, an entirely voluntary process for manufacturers (versus the way things are right now which is much less voluntary). This is more fear of the unknown, laziness, and misplaced national pride than anything else, and it's holding back those of us who want to move forward.

Some benefits are:

* The system is easier to use, because you only need to move the decimal point when converting.

* Metric is the system used by science; if people used metric in their everyday lives that'll make learning science simpler and more straightforward because we would already be thinking in metric.

* Moving to metric creates a smaller, more uniform set of units, reducing the chance for mixing them up resulting in error, which can happen even if we convert between systems with computers. Such errors can have drastic consequences.

* This is the worldwide standard, which means that foreigners and us will be using the same measures, facilitating international trade and communication.

Things may seem hard and anxiety-inducing at first, but that will give way to reaping the benefits of using such a system.

Move forward to what? What difference does it make at this point whether or not we use customary units or metric? Can a dollar amount be put on the benefit of this, why would the average person be inconvenienced motivated to change what works fine for them? Is there just a desire for sameness for sameness sake? Changing it now would be like a King decreeing new days of the week, if metrication can't happen on it's own then it shouldn't happen. If it is truly better then it will happen.

To answer your question:



You're welcome.

It's not easier to use if one already knows another system, then it is an inconvenience converting.

Second point is based on an idea not a fact, people might not care what "science" deems better as they have other measurements used as well. Americans already use metric when utility calls for it, if it truly is better in one area then it will win out in the end.

Metric would probably already be used in those systems in your scenario there.

I don't think we have an issue with facilitating international trade or communication.

People have a right to refuse.

Do you think I can just refuse to use customary? Do manufacturers have that right? No, we don't, because the laws and policies of this country require us to use it. When I want to understand a road sign, I am forced to use customary.

When I click on a weather report, I must use customary (Fahrenheit); there may be a metric option, but I'd have to click through to it, taking extra time, and well hardly anyone else will know what I'm talking about if I try to tell them the temperature in Celsius.

When manufacturers print labels, they must put customary units alongside metric units, even if that means modifying the labeling from what they use in the international market.

How is any of this voluntary?

Transition to metric is something we do as a nation, not as individuals.

The nation has decided it doesn't want to, why is it important for you personally to use metric?

Thank you for dispensing with the pretext that it's "voluntary". It was never about that.

The FDA and the American Academy of Pediatrics recommend the use of metric-only instructions and dosing tools in children's medicines:

http://www.forbes.com/sites/ritarubin/2 ... ecd7139643

A study found that having both metric and customary increases the number of errors parents made in the medicines they were asked to dose for their children. These errors can have consequences for children, resulting in them either receiving too little of the medicine and not benefiting or receiving too much and getting more side effects as a result. The metric-only group had fewer errors.

This shows that having both systems increases confusion and makes errors more likely. There should be only one system to eliminate this effect. Of course, it won't eliminate errors entirely, but it will make them less frequent.

To prevent errors like the ones below, the Emergency Care Research Institute recommends using only kilograms to measure weight (or more properly mass) in emergency rooms and dispensing with pounds and ounces once and for all:

There are other such errors mentioned in the article. This researcher's statement is my thoughts exactly:



Source: http://www.modernhealthcare.com/article ... /150509993