The real pain starts when you use derived units. How many pascals are there in a pound per square inch? And what is the ratio between DPI and pixel per mm^2
Yes and also 4 rovers on Mars, and 12 astronauts on the Moon.
The problem with the MCO disaster wasn't mixing up units, it was a sub-contractor failing to follow a specification properly, which can happen for any number of reasons. Also, it's not the only way that such missions can fail. Let us remember that since the mid-90s there have been 2 failed US Mars missions as well as a failed European mission (the Beagle 2 lander), a failed Japanese mission, and 2 failed Russian missions. As well as one and only one successful European mission and 8 successful US missions.
Any success the US had has nothing to do with using the obsolete Imperial system. Glad you were given the opportunity to do a little bit of "USA, USA, USA" fist pumping though.
Well, it depends. If Atwood's aiming at an international audience, then he should use both measurement systems. If he's happy with an American audience then there's no reason for him to bother.
I note that the date of his blog post is the international-friendly “November 19, 2012” rather than the American numeric “11/19/2012”. But internationalising dates like this is easier than providing measurements in dual units.
Indeed. MM/DD/YY is used informally and for datapoints (e.g. the Date field when you sign a form), but any time you are writing formally (e.g. a letter) you use Month DD, YYYY.
It's almost like MM/DD/YY is the abbreviation of "Month DD, YYYY"
Except you subconsciously have. All display sizes are sold in inches. The trip computer on your car will tell you miles per gallon. Even if you ignore speed limits, your speedometer gives you your speed in MPH :). If you've ever flown on a plane, altitude has been given as feet and distance in miles. So you do use both.
> If you've ever flown on a plane, altitude has been given as feet and distance in miles.
I've been on plenty of flights where displays and cockpit announcements were in metres (altitude) and kilometres (distance + velocity) - as well as Celsius for outside temperature.
True with display sizes although I'm interested more in resolution than size.
My trip computer does litres per 100km. I drive a Citroen C5 and it has kph on it as well as mph. My satnav usually reminds me if I'm driving too fast (in kmh which is handy) and that results only in me watching out for speed cameras and the fuzz :)
I don't fly - I drive if needs be. I frequently drive around Europe as it's easier than dealing with flights and a damn sight more comfortable, reliable and cheaper than flying. I can drive to Leipzig from London in about 10-12 hours.
>Except you subconsciously have. All display sizes are sold in inches.
I'm in a country that uses the metric system, and have never cared about learning the exact equivalent of screen sizes. I just intuitively know, (from using and looking at them in the office or the store) what a 13", 15", 24", 40" etc screen is like -- and I never bothered to do the conversion at all.
It wouldn't even really help, because even if a knew the measurement in metric units, it would mean very little to the actual feeling of the screen, especially considering the variety of aspect ratios and that the display size measures the diagonal.
>The trip computer on your car will tell you miles per gallon.
All trip computers I've even seen can be set to show metric units.
>Even if you ignore speed limits, your speedometer gives you your speed in MPH :)
Still no need to do any conversion. I've travelled thousands of miles in the US (Route 66 and coast to coast several times), and I never wondered "Hmm, how many km/h are 70 mph?". I just needed to keep an eye on the speed limit signs to keep below that, and drive as fast as the car/road called for. Intuitively, not by translating to metric units.
Having growing up in a metric country and lived in Britain I must admit its very nice having 60miles per equalling 60 minutes of driving for long trips.
Being able to say "I'm 45 miles away from X I'll be there in 45 minutes" without having to do recalculate each time you pass a road sign makes trips all the more pleasant.
Yes,okay, I've heard stories like this so I cannot discount them. I find it hard to believe that a car could deliver better gas mileage at 60 MPH than at 37 MPH, unless there was something very strange about the number of gears and how they related to road speeds.
But ... there it is. There really are such cars out there.
This principle is likely the reason imperial units stick: they're fantastic for fast fractional math. For the same reason, it's easier to work with 360 degrees in a circle than 2*pi radians.