Metric vs STANDARD

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nachthexe
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Re: Metric vs Decimal

Post by nachthexe »

BearJohnson wrote:
nachthexe wrote:You understand that metric IS decimal?
Fixed to Metric vs STANDARD
It is so hard not to state the obvious. :)
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nachthexe
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Re: Metric vs Decimal

Post by nachthexe »

Fletchette wrote:There is nothing more transparent or intuitive or less arbitrary between imperial or metric. They are both just units of measure, and both are "decimal" since humans usually use decimal math (digits 0-9), because we have 10 fingers. It's all about what you are accustom to.
You are wrong there I think. First off it is not the Imperial System, that was the British System after it's revamping. The US uses the United States customary units. Which are based and defined on metric measurements. But for distances, for example, people will find it difficult to say how long 23.4563 yards are for example. They will still go with Yards, feet, inches which is not decimal of course.
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JamboWhoDat
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Re: Metric vs STANDARD

Post by JamboWhoDat »

Funny this topic came up. I just watched a documentary a few weeks ago. Come to find out the United States IS metric like the rest of the world. All imperial units in the US are now defined by the metric system instead of what they used to be defined as. For example, a yard was defined as the tip of your nose to tip of you finger of your finger of your out stretched arm. Now it is 3.39 meters. They just display things still in imperial units because people keep pushing back that they don't understand it. Most US corporations and military made the switch decades ago. The US would have made the switch way back in early 1800s like the rest of the world if it wasn't for pirates. President Thomas Jefferson sent an envoy to the international meeting that standardized the metric system. Each country at the meeting was given a block and rod that standardized weight and length templates. On the way back the ship was attacked by pirates so US never got the templates and the rest is history.
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Re: Metric vs Decimal

Post by Tod1d »

nachthexe wrote:
Fletchette wrote:There is nothing more transparent or intuitive or less arbitrary between imperial or metric. They are both just units of measure, and both are "decimal" since humans usually use decimal math (digits 0-9), because we have 10 fingers. It's all about what you are accustom to.
You are wrong there I think. First off it is not the Imperial System, that was the British System after it's revamping. The US uses the United States customary units. Which are based and defined on metric measurements. But for distances, for example, people will find it difficult to say how long 23.4563 yards are for example. They will still go with Yards, feet, inches which is not decimal of course.
I gotta agree. In metric many of the units are related. Even between different types of measurements. e.g. a gram is a cubic cm of water, a hectare is 10000 m², a liter is 1000 cm³, etc...
and converting units in the same measurement is all powers of 10.
Whereas in English... inch, feet, yard, rod, mile... acre... ounce, gallon, etc... they all have odd conversions that you have to memorize or look up.
Even the standards make more sense in metric (SI).

I still think, mostly, in the english system & have to convert. But I was fully ready to jump ship & make the switch back in the 70's when Jimmy Carter suggested it because it made sense.
We (English speaking) pretty much have the market cornered on the language.. Why not just give up the antiquated system of measurement??

As for the game, yes it should just give you the option to see measurement in the system you're used to. Just like you have a preference for time zone, time/date format, etc..

The one that gets me is the distance measurements in feet. Who does that? As far as I know, all shooting sports measured in English use yards. Except for handgun qualifications/competitions that use feet.
Birds & bunnies scored in grams was another ***? moment for me.
But hey, we seem to deal with the mix of metric & English calibers OK. :)
It's "Tod", with one bloody 'd'!
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Re: Metric vs Decimal

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_dfad_ wrote: And these smart scales that I have bought to monitor my weight do switch from kilograms to stones each time someone touches their bottom occasionally. Stones, ***? Not even just pounds... Most funny, the scales are designed by Finnish company that uses metric system internally - but they are for US market.
Get a scale like I have. It speaks English and only knows how to say, "one at a time please!" :lol:


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ballester_molina
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Re: Metric vs STANDARD

Post by ballester_molina »

Well, its really funny to read about the 'standard' measurement system on the Euro Cluster.
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nachthexe
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Re: Metric vs STANDARD

Post by nachthexe »

ballester_molina wrote:Well, its really funny to read about the 'standard' measurement system on the Euro Cluster.
Isn't it? Isn't it? :D
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Re: Metric vs Decimal

Post by Fletchette »

nachthexe wrote:
Fletchette wrote:There is nothing more transparent or intuitive or less arbitrary between imperial or metric. They are both just units of measure, and both are "decimal" since humans usually use decimal math (digits 0-9), because we have 10 fingers. It's all about what you are accustom to.
You are wrong there I think. First off it is not the Imperial System, that was the British System after it's revamping. The US uses the United States customary units. Which are based and defined on metric measurements. But for distances, for example, people will find it difficult to say how long 23.4563 yards are for example. They will still go with Yards, feet, inches which is not decimal of course.
Of course Standard is decimal. As opposed to what, octal or hexadecimal or binary? Decimal means a number system that uses 10 digits (0-9), which of course we do. I assume your confusion (a common one) is that people also refer to partial whole numbers as fractions or decimals (which really means the fraction to the right of the decimal point), eg. 1/4th vs 0.25). But of course they are just two ways of writing the same thing, which can be easily converted, and are both base-10 (decimal) numbers in normal usage. 1/4 is 0.25 and 0.25 is 1/4.

I have no idea why you think it's any more difficult to say or think about how long 23.4563 yards is than it is to say or think about how long 23.4563 meters is? Setting aside the obvious fact that one would rarely, if ever, measure distances like that to 4 signification digits in everyday life, we certainly can, although we'd most likely look at the tape measure are read off 70.37 ft or 844.4 inches. Yards are not used much outside of a few areas like gun ranges and sports like football. And never used for precision measurement.

My guess is that most non-Americans (and non-Brits), don't realize that we have, and use in many cases, tape measures and rulers where the inch is divided into units of 1/10th and not fractions like 1/8, 1/32, etc.. Yep, just like metric, and they've been around for centuries. Most of my tape measures and rulers have both (and metric on the other side !!!!...because we're bilingual :P ). And in machining, the standard unit of measurement is in "Thous" (formerly mils), which is....you got it....1/1000th of an inch. The tachometer in my car doesn't measure distance in miles and yards or feet, it measures in miles and 1/10 of miles (deci-miles if you will). The gas pumps don't dispense in gallons and ounces, they dispense in gallons and 1/10th of gallons (deci-gallons if you will). Why? Because we can and do know how to divide to 10 too. It's not some magic exclusive to metric. If you asked me how far it is from my house to the nearest gas station, I would say, "5.7 miles", not "5 miles, 1240 yards, 2 feet, 10 inches". Just like I assume you would say it's "9.2 km", not "9 km, 173 meters, 26 centimeters."

American customary was/is based on Imperial, and if I recall, the only material difference is in the volume unit (gallon). In any event, whether one says Imperial, or American customary, or Standard (which is what we usually say), everyone knows what you're talking about. They know that means you're talking about inches, feet, miles, gallons, Fahrenheit, pounds, etc., as apposed to the metric units.

Saying American Customary (Standard) is based on metric is really just temporal word games, it's based on Imperial. What I assume you're trying to say is that in last several decades the units were converted and standardized to metric (SI) equivalents. This was done for uniform conversions to metric and so we didn't have to maintain some exotic metal in freezer, or light wavelength, since that was already being done for SI units.. For example, the inch was redefined to be 25.4 cm, which meant it was now technically 2 millionths of an inch shorter than it was before. But it's still an inch. There is no metric inch it's based on. Both system have changed the definitions or standard lengths/masses/volumes several times through history. The length of a meter has been slightly changed and redefined to a new standard several times though history. Currently the meter is defined as "the length of the path traveled by light in vacuum during a time interval of 1/299792458 second." Does that mean the meter was based on the speed of light? Of course not. The meter is still an arbitrarily chosen length that was retroactively fitted to a repeatable measurement. The fact that it's .299792458 of a second should be a pretty obvious indicator that it was retrofitted and not based on it, anymore than the inch was based on 25.4mm.

I swear, the brainwashing you all get about metric superiority is astounding. Both systems use arbitrarily selected units, chosen by people you will never meet, and both work for their intended purposes. They're just different. I think it's fair to say that the U.S., with our "archaic" units, has been reasonably successful over our ~240 year history, yet you all seem to think we're running around bumping into things because we can't tell how long or far away anything is, or dropping things because we can tell how much they weigh. Not to mention, that most Americans (and Brits I assume), fully understand both, and use both for some things every day. We don't sit around staring at our 2-liter bottles of soda dumbfounded trying to figure out if we can drink it because it's not in ounces or gallons.

Personally, I couldn't care less whether we stay on standard or convert more to metric, I'm fine with both.

So why don't we? 'Cause 'Merica...F--- Yeah !!!
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BearJohnson
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Re: Metric vs Decimal

Post by BearJohnson »

Fletchette wrote:So why don't we? 'Cause 'Merica...F--- Yeah !!!
TY TYVM
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Re: Metric vs Decimal

Post by L3M182 »

BearJohnson wrote:
Fletchette wrote:So why don't we? 'Cause 'Merica...F--- Yeah !!!
TY TYVM


haha love it.

"MERICA NUMBER 1. Wait..... what does this mean, please help. What is this 1, 10, 100, 1000 magic?. Its 3, 38322, 29073.249837.48436, 39.87438.56438654, 34973dgsfhkhd4545jesusdidit.fd97439!"
.
only joking, i think most if not all measurements are made in both bar the huntermate distance. If not they should, regardless of what the rest of the world use the yanks make up a massive portion of the playerbase and should be catered for.

or we could all just be cool about it and learn both.
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