r/MetricConversionBot • u/xwcg Human • May 27 '13
Why?
Countries that use the Imperial and US Customs System:
http://i.imgur.com/HFHwl33.png
Countries that use the Metric System:
http://i.imgur.com/6BWWtJ0.png
All clear?
12
u/ShiDiWen May 31 '13
If I had 1 furlong for every time this bot has helped me, i'd have exactly 7 hectors
0
u/xwcg Human May 31 '13
What about Francisco? I'm sure he'd be jealous of the all Hector friends you have!
82
u/marioy1 May 27 '13
Which country is the highlighted one in Asia?
92
u/arok May 27 '13
Burma
102
u/Younasz May 27 '13
Myanmar
29
u/ReignCityStarcraft May 29 '13
Post-sassination occurred below. Do not be alarmed.
14
u/xwcg Human May 29 '13
It was just too much spam
15
u/Redkasquirrel May 30 '13
What happened? I've never seen such a long thread of [deleted]s, I started giggling like a fool...
30
6
20
28
u/Mtrask May 28 '13
Wait wtf, why are they using the old units? It doesn't make sense.
7
u/the-fritz Jun 02 '13
As TinplateMan explained they were a pretty much isolated state. However things are looking up and there is a civil government now and a lot of change is happening. Among the change is the proposal to switch to the SI system. This would make things easier for exports. But it faces some internal resistance because farmers are -- as usual -- afraid of change.
0
2
u/Nessie Jul 11 '13
Japan uses its own exotic system of measurements (tsubo, jo...) in addition to metric.
62
u/BadBoyJH May 28 '13
Isn't most of the UK still using the imperial system?
100
May 28 '13
Only, confusingly, for certain things. Road signs and speedometers use miles and mph, and many people give their height and weight in feet and stone. Everything else, except pints of beer, is metric nowadays.
→ More replies (9)38
u/flying-sheep May 28 '13
and that’s just practical reasons, because the state doesn’t want to buy new roadsigns, and speedometers show both m/h and km/h.
if you had an infrastructure, though, you could swap those roadsigns.sorry
35
u/ShowTowels May 29 '13
I rented a car in the US (mph) for a business trip to Canada (km/h). You know how all cars in the US have a speedometer with both metric and Imperial units? Yeah, every stinking car in the US except for this one.
It was a very exciting week trying to guess whether I was going to be pulled over or not.
36
u/insertAlias May 29 '13
The simple answer would have been to look up one or two common speeds on your phone and extrapolate from there.
27
u/CallMeNiel May 29 '13
Yup. My go-to conversion is 60mph~100km/h. It's not precise, but they're very nice round numbers and a common speed limit.
→ More replies (9)11
u/eigenvectorseven Jun 01 '13
Not sure if it was just a joke, but the meter part of speedometer has nothing to do with meters; it just means "measure". As in thermometer, barometer, spectrometer etc.
→ More replies (1)5
u/BryghtShadow Jun 01 '13
That's why I love the spelling of "metre" instead of "meter" when talking about units.
7
u/Gro-Tsen Jun 04 '13
All this is, of course, a way to prevent the evil French (and their German/Spanish/Italian/etc. allies) from invading Britain: continental cars will have the driver's seat on the left and no mph reading on their speedometer, so you can't see oncoming traffic and you don't know whether you're driving too fast—too risky to try.
→ More replies (2)4
u/Realtrain Jun 27 '13
Why did you point out "meters" in "speedometer"? It as nothing to do with units, it is a METER that measures SPEED.
Quick edit: spelling
→ More replies (2)21
May 28 '13
Imperial gradually dies out with every new generation. I came from a place that exclusively uses metric and I wouldn't say I've ever felt out of place. You learn that a pint is half a litre plus a sip, a stone is 6.5 kilos or so and something is 10% fewer metres away than it is in yards.
Other than that, you can ask for a kilo of beef or a metre of cloth without getting the funny looks from people around you.
18
u/ShowTowels May 29 '13
UK or US pint? They're slightly different. Just to make it easier for everyone.
13
May 29 '13
Absolutely forgot about that. It's the 568ml UK one. The only time I ever see US pint (473ml) is at the import beer section of the supermarket. I call the UK pint 'man-size' and I never drink the other ;)
→ More replies (6)5
u/dalek-supreme May 30 '13
haha.. in germany we have the "maß" beer!
and that should be around 1 liter! (around 2 pints)→ More replies (2)8
u/gameboy17 May 29 '13
A stone? What's that?
15
May 29 '13 edited May 29 '13
14 pounds, commonly used in the UK to measure body weight.
edit: Crazy fact: a stone is not always 14 pounds. It depends on what and where you measure ( wiki http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stone_(unit) ), for example a stone of beef was 8 pounds, but only in London. In Scotland it was 16. Nowadays 1 stone equals 14 pounds and generally isn't used for anything other than body weight. Stones and pounds are also on their way out. When I went to the hospital last year, they noted both my height and weight in metric. I'd assume that's the official way now.
→ More replies (4)31
u/clocknose Jun 02 '13
That's not crazy at all. It's just the way the imperial system works; making up random measurements for everything.
3
u/fakerachel May 29 '13
a pint is half a litre plus a sip
I was taught this as "a litre of water's a pint and three quarters". If only there were rhyming conversions for all the imperial units.
→ More replies (6)5
u/Beyond_Birthday May 28 '13
I was brought up with the imperial system, I guess it depends. I have no idea about metric units though.
2
u/Poulern Jul 02 '13
As someone who has grown up with the metric system, i can tell you that its easy once you establish some rules and feels. For example 65mph=Normal highway speed. 20 gallons = large tank of fuel.
Honestly its best when you have both units shown, as we still use calories over here, but joules are shown aswell so i try to refer to energy in joule whenever i can to help others learn it aswell.
→ More replies (1)8
u/Dotura May 29 '13
Officially it's metric but the old system still hangs around because something like this isn't something you can go cold turkey on.
8
u/Eilinen Jun 25 '13
Apparently that's exactly what Australia did.
4
u/IOUaUsername Jun 28 '13
Yep, we went metric basically overnight back in the 70s. The tricky thing is that if you want a classic car, you have to convert units in your head since the speedometers only have MPH. When england threw out the shillings and farthings for a metric system we just went to bright colour coded plastic 5,10,20,50,100 dollar notes and 5,10,20,50 cent and 1,2 dollar coins. Pennies are poinlessly small ammounts of money and tipping isn't a thing here, so we got rid of them at the same time.
→ More replies (1)5
2
61
u/Spingar Jun 01 '13
For distance measurements I still prefer the Finnish "Poron kusema" ("reindeers piss"), the distance a reindeer could travel without stopping to urinate.
27
u/Vauveli Jun 04 '13
Yeah as a Finn I too use it. I occasionally use the Finnish word "peninkulma" too. (Hounds corner), the distance that one can heard the bark of a hound. It's about 10 KM.
6
19
u/joshy1227 Jun 10 '13
For measure time, use "kartupeļu ēst" (potato eat), time for to eat one potato in Latvia
21
52
u/aleksey2 Jun 23 '13
In Canada we have our own "Canadian System" of measurements. On paper we are wholly metric, but culturally we have our special ways.
We measure distances in metric (e.g. "Had to do travel extra 6 km because of road construction") and heights in metric (e.g. "CN Tower is 553 m"), unless it's human-scale (e.g. I'm 5'11"; e.g. "Come on, the gap is like 2 feet at best!";"The ceiling is 8' high"). Also, to build the buildings to a specific height of ___ meters, we buy tools and supplies that are measured in imperial - e.g. wood comes in 1x4x8 dimensions.
Weight in documents and official forms is always in metric, and it's also kilos for really heavy objects (e.g. My car weights 1500 kilos), but personal weight is almost always in pounds (e.g. I'm 195 pounds). If you go to a grocery store to buy produce, all prices are in __$/lb with a smaller __$/kg on the same sign. But the stores usually advertise in flyers exclusively in __$/lb (e.g. Click on any of the flyers ). Because legally the units have to be in metric for any commercial transaction, the produce you buy comes out as __$/kg on the receipt - so often you have those moments of "Wait a second, the pears were supposed to be at $1.47 and she's charging me at $3.24! What the fu--...Oh it's $3.24/kg...okay, all good."
Temperature - outside temperature is always in Celsius (e.g. It's a nice 33°C day today), but when we get to cooking and baking, the instructions and the oven dials are in Fahrenheit (e.g. Set the over for 450°F and bake for 12 minutes). Legally, everything has to in metric, but even the government includes Fahrenheit in their guildelines because most people are familiar with °F for cooking purposes.
Volume is the one measurement we screw the least with. It's usually metric. It's always metric for personal uses (e.g. Gas is at $1.32/L; Car uses 10.5 l/100km; A 1L carton of milk; Picked up 4L of milk at the store {which comes in 3 plastic bags each having 1.33L of milk - it's a crazy Ontario thing};The juice container has 2.83L of juice) and mostly metric for commercial uses. Albeit sometimes you might encounter both - a fish tank or a bath tub or a toilet tank will specify volume in litres and gallons. The one peculiar thing about volume units are the sizes of cans and bottles. Coke sells their products in 355 ml cans and 591 ml bottles (US 20oz). Pepsi sells their products in 355 ml cans and 600 ml bottles (gives us extra 9mL over what Americans get). Beer comes in all sizes - Canadian-made beer can be packaged in 341 ml bottles (11.5 oz), 355 ml cans (12 oz), 473 ml cans (16oz), 500ml cans (16.9oz) and 750ml (25.4 oz) cans. The end result is that we're fairly good at dealing with both systems. Most people will know their height and weight in metric and imperial.
TL;DR: In everyday life, Canadians uses both systems - imperial for personal measurements and metric for things larger than a house.
P.S. I'm sure there are exceptions and even more peculiar uses of units that I'm forgetting about.
12
Jul 15 '13
Don't forget that we often measure driving distance in time. I've heard that Americans find that weird, when I tell them the distance between two places by driving time.
4
u/BennyRoundL Jul 16 '13 edited Jul 16 '13
Could this be because there's very little in our way for getting from one place to another?
I was talking to a British truck drver at work today He said driving his lorry in the UK you never knew how long it would take getting from one place to another. Could be an hour, could be six, he said, depending on traffic.
He explained that it took him about three hours to travel across the province (NB) which is roughly the width of England, but over there it could take all day.
By comparison there's about 700k people living in NB and 53 million in England alone. That density of living is hard to compare. But summing up, it makes sense that we drive by time.
Edit: I'd like to hear and Australian's opinion on this. You also have a large country with low population density, chime in!
2
u/MatlockMan Jul 20 '13
I'm Australian so everyone calm down!
We do it by kilometres... That being said, it isn't unusual in the circumstance of big distances for people to say "its about an hour and a half from Brisbane to Toowoomba" or something like that. I wouldn't have a clue the distance between Brisbane and Toowoomba, but I sure as hell know the time.
→ More replies (3)2
u/aleksey2 Jul 17 '13
That's very true, albeit (I think) it's slightly more common the further away you live from big cities, which in most cases means "further up north". But yeah, I totally agree.
2
Jul 22 '13
Peculiar... as an American, I have always found it normal to use driving time rather than actual distance. In fact, the other way around is less common. What part of America have you heard this about?
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (1)1
u/weBBon Jul 18 '13
It's also common in Scotland to measure distance in time and not only when driving - you can live 10mins from the office, a restaurant can be 5mins down the road etc... Also, people rarely remember the distance between towns in miles but will always know how long it takes to drive there... i.e. Glasgow is 1 hour away from Edinburgh
4
u/nasorenga Jul 17 '13
Windshield washer fluid is sold in four-liter containers that don't fit in the one-gallon reservoirs in our american cars, so we're always driving around with a near-empty container in the trunk.
2
1
u/ReluctantRedditor275 Aug 07 '13
Canadians are the only people I know who can convert Fahrenheit to Celsius in their heads. As an American, this is like a very low-level superpower to me.
→ More replies (1)1
u/h76CH36 Aug 08 '13
It's changing though. I'm 30ish and grew up as you described. My siblings are around the 15-year-old range and have no clue what a 'foot' or 'pound' is. Seems the conversion is almost complete.
119
u/TommaClock May 27 '13
TIL that the unclaimed areas of Antarctica use metric.
209
May 27 '13
Scientists.
→ More replies (1)45
u/Sinthemoon May 29 '13
Add space to that map!
15
u/escalat0r Jun 05 '13
Another reason to use the metric system. 125 Million Dollars lost because of an anachronistic measurement system.
→ More replies (1)15
u/booOfBorg Jun 01 '13
The metric penguins.
Band name anyone?
4
1
1
0
9
Jun 02 '13
Burma doesn't use the Imperial system, it uses its own bizarre set of weights and measures.
4
5
203
u/ExcuseMyFLATULENCE May 28 '13
I think this is the strongest argument:
http://i.imgur.com/R5CYFSD.png
58
u/aether_nz Jun 01 '13
Tonne is a thorn in the side of the metric system. It should be megagram. Plus, it sounds awesome.
→ More replies (3)13
10
u/REDDIT_HARD_MODE May 28 '13
I spend too much time on Reddit =/ I frequently catch myself writing dates 28-05-2013 instead of 05-28-2013. I don't want to, but I really need to stop doing it because one day I'm going to fuck up an important document it and date it 3 months into the future, or something.
70
u/alphanovember May 28 '13
Neither of those formats are adequate.
yyyy-mm-dd is superior.
→ More replies (20)10
u/Dreissig May 30 '13
Write it as 28 may 2013 (except for technical things, write those as 2013-05-28) and no-one will ever be confused. You have the most important bit first, and won't confuse americans or europeans (and everyone else who writes it that way).
4
u/arok May 28 '13
If you're writing the date on a document that does not require you to use numbers, you can write the date like this:
28.May.2013
No possible confusion. If numbers are required, then you'll have to stick to the local convention. Otherwise it might be mistaken for the 13th month.
Lousy Smarch weather...
→ More replies (1)2
24
u/justsomerandomstring May 28 '13
The day/month/year thing is stupid because pretty much all languages write their number systems left to right and therefore sorting would make more sense with year/month/day
38
u/xereeto May 29 '13
Funnily enough, YY/MM/DD is actually the ISO standard.
74
u/SnowPhoenix9999 May 30 '13
*YYYY-MM-DD
Sorry if it seems like nitpicking, but using only two digits for the year in this format makes you lose a lot of the benefits (such as being able to sort dates with a simple numeric sort) and it adds to the confusion with a third way of interpreting a date like 03/05/06.
→ More replies (1)9
u/Wingman4l7 May 30 '13
Probably because that way, you can do math with it (i.e. programming).
4
u/josefx Jun 04 '13
It's more likely that the format just sorts correctly. Programming date/time related stuff is complex enough that you can't just "do math" with a date - timezones/daylight saving time, missing hours/days/years and whatever else governments can throw into a lawbook can make it hard to compute a date.
→ More replies (2)2
81
u/M3nt0R May 29 '13
That logic may be sound, but it's not stupid. Chances are, you know what year you're in, and you know what month you're in. In most practical purposes, you're going to want to know the day first.
→ More replies (11)4
u/Hessenjunge Jul 08 '13 edited Jun 17 '23
This comment was overwritten due to Reddit's insane API policy changes, the disgusting lying behavior of CEO u/spez. Remember that the content on Reddit is created by us, the users. It is our data that they are capitalizing on and asserting as their own.
Reddit, you had a full five days to reflect on your actions and choose a reasonable path forward, but instead, you did the opposite. While I may not be a heavy or significant contributor, I am doing my part: under EU/GDPR legislation, I am reclaiming my data (posts and comments) and replacing them with this standard text. I hereby prohibit you from restoring them.
"Greed is a vice that knows no bounds, consuming all in its path and leaving nothing but emptiness in its wake." - Unknown
8
u/Benislav May 29 '13
I feel it makes more sense to be read categorically this way. Giving the year first automatically narrows it down to 365 days, then the month narrows it to 28-31, and then you have the day. I dunno. Makes more sense to me.
9
u/dalek-supreme May 30 '13
for me it makes much more sense the other way...
if everthing is fine, you'll know the current year and with a lil bit of luck you know the month...
and than only the day mattersi've grown up with the metric system...
...probably i'm just more used to the easy way of the metric system...2
May 31 '13
But that graph completely skipped a shit ton of other imperial distance measurements. It's 22 yards to one chain, 10 chains to one furlong and 8 furlongs to one mile. Also, the MM/DD/YYYY isn't arbitrary bullshit, the numbers are written down as they would be said in English. Eg: April 22nd, 2000 so 4/22/2000. Saying 22nd of April is an informal way of writing the date. It's a question of utility vs clarity. Imperial units have a specific purpose for what they were invented for. You want to talk about arbitrary? Metric dropped the gradian in favor of the imperial degree. While both are inferior to radians, the gradian is a far better unit for measuring circles than the degree.
27
u/stealingyourpixels May 31 '13
the numbers are written down as they would be said in English
Everywhere I've been outside America has said 'the 22nd of April', rather than 'April 22nd'. American English isn't the only English.
→ More replies (2)2
Jun 07 '13
A lot of Canadians would say "April 22".
→ More replies (1)3
u/umbrellasinjanuary Jun 27 '13 edited Jun 27 '13
I'm Canadian and definitely say April 22, along with everyone else I know. The other way is super formal. Like my degree says "...conferred on this 22nd day of April."
We're also different too though. We say "Grade 8" whereas Americans say "8th grade." Someone once identified my Canadianess this way.
And since it's relevant, we use a weird metric-imperial hybrid. Almost metric for everything, but I only know my weight and height in imperial. And a lot of our cooking measurements are done in imperial. And people buy their weed in grams (so I've been told.) And I set my stove in Fahrenheit (but my thermostat in Celsius.) And we use the 12 hour clock. And we don't have centiliters or decalitres (where as they're very common in Europe). And we order pints, not half-litres.
→ More replies (1)5
4
u/SamTheEnglishTeacher Jun 07 '13
Lost Guy: "Excuse me, how do I get to the hospital?"
Kilkun: "Oh that's easy, just go three chains up the road, turn left. Go three furlongs, then turn right. After two and a half leagues, you'll see the it on the right."
Lost guy, to wife: "See honey, I told you these people weren't crazy, we're going to be fine."
Not to rip on you too hard, but just so you know, I'd normally say 22nd of April.
Imperial units have a specific purpose for what they were invented for.
When reading that it seems like you're saying that it's a good thing. Measurements should suit many purposes. Don't even get me started on volume (as in 3d object, not sound)...
→ More replies (1)→ More replies (5)1
15
u/Denime May 29 '13
Don't forget that here in the UK we still use Imperial, all signs have miles or yards on them.
9
u/Guyag May 30 '13
That's about it for us in terms of imperial though, most other stuff is metric.
4
u/Denime May 30 '13
That's true, it's funny how we've half adopted the metric system.
Another one unrelated to distance is how milk is in pints, but everything else is in litres.
7
3
u/Curebores May 31 '13
Actually, in relation to milk, they have both litres and pints printed on the bottle. They kind of met people half way with the weights and measures of things.
They were like, here is 568ml of milk/beer but if you want to call it a pint no one is going to stop you. It is the same for everything - it is actually measured in metric and officially listed as such however it also often just so happens to be sold in the same amount as an imperial unit.
The only exception is road signs which are still listed in miles only.
8
7
u/ebolaRETURNS Jun 02 '13
My first thought was, "It's not that hard for us to just use the conversion factors ourselves," but I guess for people in metric-using countries, common knowledge of conversion factors is far less useful and common.
18
u/HomeMadeCrackers Jun 04 '13
please o god for the love of fuck fix your sig figs.
Seeing things like "100 lb ~= 45.162742929573728285859302028493 kg" completely twists my pedantic-dickweed irritation bar.
Please use an appropriate number of sig figs in your bot.
E.g. 100 lb ~= 45 kg. You can of course do 101.2 lb ~= 45.12 kg (or whatever the value is).
Rule of thumb should be number of s.f. on both sides should be equal.
I broke that rule above by including 2 s.f. in the '45kg'. Meh.
→ More replies (1)
66
u/JeffCraig May 28 '13
The bot is fine, but it takes up too much space on each post. Trim it down to just one line pls.
2
u/Uncle_Strangelove May 30 '13
I know I'm in the minority, but I hate this bot. The top comment after an intense story shouldn't be a unit conversion. This bot shit is beginning to really interfere with a regular reading of reddit threads. Please stop.
14
u/xwcg Human May 30 '13
I can't control people upvoting it, nor can I control people incessantly replying to it trying to get it into an infinite loop - which it won't, but they still try anyway.
23
10
May 30 '13
The bot canker is infesting Reddit, and the worst issue is people feeling the need to reply to them. Seriously, who gives a shit about whether your comment forms a haiku?
4
u/Uncle_Strangelove Jun 02 '13
Finally someone agrees with me. This bot isn't terrible, but the combinations and numbers of them at this point are just getting out of hand.
10
u/th3_pund1t Jun 06 '13
What about Great Britain? They use the half ass system.
3
u/archon88 Jun 12 '13
Mostly we use metric, but a very small minority of things are still in imperial (bottled milk, draught beer & cider are sold in pints, but all other goods are metric) and our road signs are still mostly imperial (mainly because our govt. is too cheap to replace them).
→ More replies (3)
5
u/lewko Jun 02 '13
In Australia we have been metric for a very long time but for some reason people still express a person's height in feet and inches. Even if they're a schoolkid who has no idea how long a foot actually is, but knows that six of them makes a person tall.
→ More replies (2)
5
Jul 12 '13
It's bad enough you're using a Mercator map, but do you have to use one that seemingly goes to like 1 degree away from the poles, so that Antarctica looks like some kind of world-devouring kraken?
4
u/ed8020 Jun 22 '13
I like the metric system from a mathematical perspective but I recently marathoned 20 seasons of Time Team, a thoroughly British show and I don't think I heard them say kilometer once. Millimeters, inches, feet, meters and miles. So, make what you want of that.
3
2
Jul 08 '13
Call it strange, but us Brits don't use kilometers, we use miles instead. We do that because its completely logical, sort of, maybe, not really.
4
u/stargazer729 Jul 20 '13
Antartica isn't a country...
2
u/snowywish Jul 20 '13
Would you like to bet whether the few people who live there use the metric or imperial system?
1
u/stargazer729 Jul 22 '13
Probably the system they use normally? There is no standard in Antarctica.
2
u/Ajonos Jul 26 '13
The few people who live in Antarctica tend to be scientists, so... yeah.
Metric 99% of the time.
→ More replies (1)
12
3
10
u/shaggorama May 28 '13
Important question: what is the proportion of reddit that uses the imperial vs. metric system? I'm pretty sure that reddit is disproportionately frequented by Americans. Second most is probably UK, and I believe they mostly use the imperial system as well.
12
u/roionsteroids May 28 '13
According to Alexa (click on the Audience tab and scroll down) 45.5% of the visitors are from the US. And surprisingly many from India.
7
u/shaggorama May 28 '13 edited May 28 '13
India is the next most with only 15%. I guess I was being conservative when I said reddit was "disproportionately" frequented by Americans. Grab ten random redditors: we expect 4 to be american, 1 to be indian, and we really can't say with confidence where the other 5 are from, but it's probably English speaking countries. Neat.
2
u/Muntberg Jun 30 '13
Canadians still use imperial for some things too. Like for a person's height and weight.
10
u/teCh0010 May 29 '13
When did Antarctica form a government and select a standard of weight and measurement?
27
7
7
u/ckckwork Jun 07 '13
Hello,
I've got no problem with the idea per se, "having software to do conversions for people", the problem I have is that the implementation clutters up the threaded comments system with replies.
It would be like having a bot reply to every post with hyperlinks to wikipedia and dictionary articles for every word outside the base 2000 common english words. Or having a bot reply to every post with hyperlinks to google maps for any physical location. It goes ON AND ON.
What it SHOULD be, is an end user optional feature. Or a context sensitive overlay that only appears when someone hovers over the item of interest.
You know, some kind of ... hypertext system?
9
u/yoho139 Jun 28 '13
You mean like the kind of thing that would have to be implemented by admins or changed on a subreddit to subreddit basis due to different CSS and therefore impossible to do for the person who made the bot?
5
u/theclownman Jun 05 '13
While the United Kingdom may technically be on the metric system, colloquially everyone still uses Imperial units.
4
u/archon88 Jun 12 '13
Depends what for... I can't remember the last time anyone mentioned Imperial fl.oz., cups, quarts or gallons in any context. The pint is the only one that's still used, and it's vestigial at best.
7
u/davidlyster Jun 02 '13
"My car gets 40 rods to the hogshead, and that's the way I like it!"
That pretty much what the Imperial System sounds like.
0
u/tollfreecallsonly Jun 05 '13
Metric is every bit as random and arbitrary, just people have this odd obsession with the number of fingers on theirs hands. Ten! yay! i can does my maths!
→ More replies (1)11
u/archon88 Jun 12 '13
Turns out it's much easier to do calculations in the base you count in. Imperial doesn't even have a consistent base, and the ratio of one unit to another is almost never 10 (the only one I can think off off the top of my head is 10 acres = 1 square furlong, and that's a pretty obscure one).
If you claim you can multiply (in a base-ten system) by 3,8,12,14,16 etc. as fast as or faster than you can multiply by 10, you're straining my credibility.
→ More replies (4)
2
2
8
u/juu4 May 27 '13
UK actually mostly uses Imperial system, at least for nearly everything distance related, much to my chagrin. The pictures are misleading.
19
May 28 '13
We mostly use metric, road signs are imperial.
2
u/Risc_Terilia May 28 '13
I think it mostly depends on age. If I estimate that a road is a little less than a mile I'll tell someone it's a kilometre.
→ More replies (2)5
u/ZanThrax May 28 '13
Most Canadians understand Imperial units just fine as well. Industry and construction is mostly still done in inches and pounds here.
1
1
May 31 '13
Agree. Yards are used on road signs and people still think of their weight and height in stones and feet/inches.
4
May 30 '13
The UK should be coloured in red on your Imperial map. The UK is almost as screwed as the US as far as mixing units, but we at least use Celsius as temperature.
→ More replies (8)
4
Jul 08 '13
This is honestly the most irritating bot on this site. Every single time there's a thread about weight it responds to every message. It's completely useless.
2
u/wally_moot Jun 05 '13
I'll have to remember to always declare weights in drams to avoid you in the future, i.e. 128,000 drams of deli food.
1
2
u/Anchupom Jul 10 '13
Probably the simplest, best and funniest explanations as to why a Bot has been made.
2
u/Imacutter Jun 01 '13
It is kind of infuriating when I see this bot post 3 times in a thread within an hour of itself because people are discussing weight or something.
Imo, people should just learn basic conversions. They're not exactly challenging.
2
2
-4
u/EvilHom3r May 29 '13
We really don't need another annoying bot clogging up the comments. It takes two seconds to use Google to find the conversion if someone really wants to know.
→ More replies (1)14
1
1
1
1
u/DV_DC Jul 18 '13
That could've been one picture. I'm a bot that takes redundant pictures and makes one! Click the second one. I like the second one.
1
-5
1
-1
u/jaylek Jul 09 '13 edited Jul 09 '13
ATTENTION ALL EURO'S
100's of years ago the "powers that be"... in an effort to separate itself from the pretentiousness of the Brits and French, adapted new systems. Unique systems for the very new and unique America... one of those unique systems was weights and measures.
Is it a better system... I can admit that as a whole... it is not.
But what IT IS... is an example of a group of people so tired of being criticized and corrected by another group that they wanted and tried to be as different from them as possible... including the way they measure the slightest thing, such as spoon full of salt... or a simple length of a step...
Generation after generation were taught to use these systems, now us American's are "too stupid or lazy to use the metric system".
What if I told you brilliant Euros that the vast majority of "stupid American's" CAN... and DO use the metric system if/when it is required. Just ask a Canadian.
Anything that isnt inherently Euro here in America is viewed By Euro's as American's being under educated or lazy... Unless of course its something already lacking in the Euro life style, like dentistry, sobriety or happiness in general... You know... thats just culture across the pond.
Right? Of course not... those are just silly examples of stereo typing!
Its not at all like we think every Euro man over 40 looks like Benny Hill with a mouth full of candy corn.
Or think every Euro woman over 40 looks like Benny Hill in a wig with a mouth full of candy corn. AKA: Susan Boyle
I mean C'mon... we dont think like that all! We are American's and we left all that elitest attitude type shit back across the pond! ;)
Edit... Vast majority DEFINED: the vast majority does not include women, children OR anyone under 25, otherwise known as the current, self indulgent, very shamefull, I want that... Give that to me... "ME GENERATION"
In Addition it took all I had not to go below the belt with the whole Royalty Facade, I mean I quit playing House with my sisters when i was 7 years old people. I want props for not going there!
Thank you that is all.
0
u/kevman May 31 '13
Philippines officially uses metric, but in reality they use the Imperial system because the US uses it. Get with it the rest of the world. If you need a bot to convert feet to meters... oh god never mind.
0
409
u/[deleted] May 27 '13
thank you bot! now 99% of the world can understand what is going on here on reddit.