Imperial or metric measurements?

Despite years of having the metric system imposed on them, the people of the UK still prefer to use Imperial meaurements in many aspects of everyday life, especially for more personal things like height and weight, many food items, and also distance, which is always expressed in miles.

As a traditionalist, it will probably come as no surprise that I prefer the Imperial system, which links us back to our remote past. The imposition of the metric system seeks to separate us from this heritage. It is also a bland, arid system in which everything is a multiple of ten, and it's no accident, I think, that standards of maths among children has declined rapidly since its introduction, with no need for them to do rapid, complex sums in their heads any more.

This is not to say that the metric system doesn't have its uses, especially in the physical sciences. At our school they taught us both, because they wanted to prepare us for the real world, and I would suggest that this policy should be adopted in all schools, rather than leaving kids confused and floundering when they enter society.

To be fair, math standards are not all terrible in many places around the world where they use the metric system. So I don't think that's the reason why math standards are declining in the UK, or the Anglo-Sphere at large.

I do agree with keeping imperial measures around but not only keeping them around, additionally teach people how those specific lengths came about, their history. Maybe also teach them that the length of a grown man's foot as a way to measure things makes more sense in a culture where people are from the same or at least a similar genetic stock. An average Mexican's foot is different from an average Afghan's foot and so on.

When it comes to planning, construction, sciences, I find the metric system very useful but then again I grew up with it as well.

There is one metric measure that I find more "down to Earth" or practical than the the one in the imperial system and that's temperature.

100 °F, Fahrenheit, is supposedly the temprature of a man's body, fair enough I guess, sort of, but with the 0 °F they made a mistake. They used a mixture of ice and salt, where the salt melts the ice, creating a slushy mixture which due to the process of the salt melting the ice, reaches a temperature quite far below the temperature where water freezes.
So 0 °F is not where water freezes which would have been a very practical point of reference but the temperature of some stupid ice-salt mixture which nobody in their daily life encounters.

In the metric system 0 °C, Celsius, is where water freezes. Very useful, that's around the temperature where most plants wither in the frost, that's where your drinking water freezes in the open air, that's where you slip on the road on some frozen water. A very important point of temperature for all organisms. Makes a lot of sense to choose this point as the 0 °C point. A 100 °C is where water boils, again a very important point of temperature for a species that cooks its food and where our entire evolution is predicated on us taming and controlling fire.
So basically the phase changes of water, where it freezes and where it starts to cook make up the 0 and 100 of the Celsius scale. Not only very practical for our daily lives but also scientifically accurate and meaningful.

Anfang wrote:

To be fair, math standards are not all terrible in many places around the world where they use the metric system. So I don't think that's the reason why math standards are declining in the UK, or the Anglo-Sphere at large.

I do agree with keeping imperial measures around but not only keeping them around, additionally teach people how those specific lengths came about, their history. Maybe also teach them that the length of a grown man's foot as a way to measure things makes more sense in a culture where people are from the same or at least a similar genetic stock. An average Mexican's foot is different from an average Afghan's foot and so on.

When it comes to planning, construction, sciences, I find the metric system very useful but then again I grew up with it as well.

There is one metric measure that I find more "down to Earth" or practical than the the one in the imperial system and that's temperature.

100 °F, Fahrenheit, is supposedly the temprature of a man's body, fair enough I guess, sort of, but with the 0 °F they made a mistake. They used a mixture of ice and salt, where the salt melts the ice, creating a slushy mixture which due to the process of the salt melting the ice, reaches a temperature quite far below the temperature where water freezes.
So 0 °F is not where water freezes which would have been a very practical point of reference but the temperature of some stupid ice-salt mixture which nobody in their daily life encounters.

In the metric system 0 °C, Celsius, is where water freezes. Very useful, that's around the temperature where most plants wither in the frost, that's where your drinking water freezes in the open air, that's where you slip on the road on some frozen water. A very important point of temperature for all organisms. Makes a lot of sense to choose this point as the 0 °C point. A 100 °C is where water boils, again a very important point of temperature for a species that cooks its food and where our entire evolution is predicated on us taming and controlling fire.
So basically the phase changes of water, where it freezes and where it starts to cook make up the 0 and 100 of the Celsius scale. Not only very practical for our daily lives but also scientifically accurate and meaningful.

It's not the main reason why maths standards are declining, it's just part of a general malaise.

My primary objection to the metric system, other than its associations with the French Revolution, Napoleon and the EU, is on aesthetic grounds, both in the names of the units, forcing Latin and Greek together into ugly compounds, and its simplistic reliance on multiples of ten.

Units in the Imperial system, on the other hand, are living, ancient parts of the language, and nowhere is ten used as a multiplier. Fahrenheit isn't really part of the traditional system though, as it's a relatively modern invention.

Interestingly, though, prior to around 1300, when the inch, foot and yard were all shortened by an Act of Parliament, the yard was very close in length to what much later became the metre.

Maybe the factor of always 10 seems a bit uninspired or cold compared to the various more or less simple fractions which convert the imperial measures but really, the number 10 derives from our number system, which is based on 10, both, in the imperial and metric parts of the world. So that one is already baked into the established number system.

However, they could have defined 1 meter to be about the length of an average French man's foot and then from there used the 10 based convention for the smaller and larger derived measures.

Would be interesting to know what they were thinking. Maybe they ordered the manufacturing of a measure tape and wanted to know what kind of scale they could reliably draw and still read. I would say 1mm (1000mm = 1m) is something that can still just be drawn on or carved by hand into a measuring device with a fine grade tool. Maybe that was what determined the length of 1m, I'm not sure.

Maths are racist...Whatever is over theirs heads - revealing genetic disparity - or is threatening to the primary idea - top<>own - must be Nazi, or "obejectivist" - whatever the hell that means...evil...

I agree with Maia.

Apart, metrics are boring maths, super duper boring.

Maia’s assessment was kinder.

I think ultimately, while both have their uses, the system that has evolved naturally over time is the better one.

I think, if it was really important to someone that the Anglo-sphere adopts the metric system then they would have to start a campaign on how racist the imperial system is and how it's White supremacist, sorry, Anglo supremacist to insist on it.

You know, how they get them when they import other things (or people) to the Anglo-sphere that they are taught to cheer for.