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by cstrat 1741 days ago
This doesn't seem to work on desktop?

I've never heard of F as the more 'human' temperature range. Don't you either use C or F. Since I've never used F it doesn't seem more human to me.

3 comments

Temperatures in °F always feel to me like climate change is donne for good and the atmosphere is now able to boil water in summer.
I found the exact timestamp in the video, but MKBDH actually didn't explain it very well.

So I found some other articles that articulate why F is better for weather: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28524505

On desktop you may need to adjust the browser window size until it's portrait aspect ratio. On windows I snap it to half the screen. In landscape the app shows the extended forecast.

Sorry I'm on mobile and can't link directly to the relevant part of the video: https://youtu.be/BMGrsOawKac

Basically F gives more precise info/digit for the temperature ranges humans experience. 99F is near the top of the range, while 99C is unheard of for weather on Earth. So F gives approximately twice the precision. To get the same precision in C you have to add decimals

> Basically F gives more precise info/digit for the temperature ranges humans experience. 99F is near the top of the range, while 99C is unheard of for weather on Earth. So F gives approximately twice the precision. To get the same precision in C you have to add decimals

Same amount of bits used either way, i.e., you can also use dezi-Celsius, e.g. 22.5 °C = 225° dC, while not commonly used when displaying it, it gives just the same info and is often used in µC; so that's really not an argument for Fahrenheit.

The top-range being 100 °F is just nonsense, there are lots of places with 110° F (~43° C) and also some with 120°F (~50° C) and some places that top out at 70° F (~21° C) in summer. Also, that would imply that bottom is 0° F (~ -17° C) and mid-range is 50° F (~ 10° C), both aren't true for either observed temperatures in most parts of the world nor would 50° F be a good level for human comfort, which is subjective anyhow.

The single thing that could make one think that a temperature scale is a better fit for human consumption is being used to that scale. If one grows up with °F then naturally °F is the scale than one can better relate to, similar with Celsius.

The actual benefits of Celsius are relation to freezing and boiling point (combined with barometric pressure) of water, something that is daily used by a lot of people (cook pasta, make ice cubes, know not to lick metal poles at <0°C, ...) and more importantly, can actually be objectively related too.

In addition to that it scales 1:1 with Kelvin, a scale that actually has a defined lower end that matters a lot in our universe.

Yes, same amount of bits, but different number of digits and thus screen real estate.

I was speaking from personal experience. One of the reasons I made it easy to toggle between F and C in my app was so I could adjust from F to C (in Korea). I think it worked and I am comfortable using both C and F now (although I admit I am more accustomed to F).

However, one thing I noticed when I switch to C in my app is I get less information. I have seen systems that double the C reading to get a similar precision as F, but then it is no longer really C.

My point was not that temperatures don't go over 100F, but that F uses the entire range of 2-digit readings. C only uses half of the positive 2-digit range.

Also because freezing in F is above 0, you can show a useful range of temperatures below freezing before having to add a negative sign.

So I still argue F is more information-dense than C given a 2-digit temperature reading for weather.