29 May
2010
29 May
'10
7:46 a.m.
On Sat, May 29, 2010 at 3:28 PM, dwight elvey <dkelvey at hotmail.com> wrote:
Speak for yourself!
Seriously, fractions are no more "natural". We learn numbers and
division as well in exactly the same way.
I use halves, thirds and quarters occasionally, not often, but to be
honest, I'm just as likely to talk about point 5 or point 2 5 or point
3 or something. E.g. I am 1.88m tall and weigh 106kg, although I'm
working on getting back to 85kg or so as I was in 2005.
I am also 6 foot 2, but then, I remembered that from my youth. It
doesn't change! My weight does and I no longer have any idea what I
weigh in stones. By a decade or so ago, more of the people I dealt
with used metric, so I switched over the only thing I've ever weighed
in stones or any imperial unit - my own bodyweight.
Even in childhood or in school in the early 1970s, weights and
measures were metric only.
Sure, speed limits on the road are in mph, but I don't have any
particular problem thinking in klicks instead.
--
Liam Proven ? Profile: http://www.linkedin.com/in/liamproven
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From: lproven
at gmail.com
---snip---
Metric makes sense. Everything's in tens and hundreds and thousands;
unit conversion is trivial. The different measurements are all
connected - 1 litre = a 10 x 10 x 10 cm cube, and that much water is
1kg. Freeze it, that's 0?C; boil it, that's 100?. It all interlocks
like clockwork, no fooling around with 24 of this makes 1 of those but
three-fourteenths of one of them, and a unit of weight depends on what
you're weighing and suchlike nonsense.
It's about as sensible, practical and useful as Roman numerals.
Hi
?The only problem is that decimal don't fit the physical world well.
Thing in the physical world are fraction of powers of fractions.
1/8 and 1/32 make more sense in the physical world.
?Decimal is just what you learned in school.