Use whichever system suits the situation. NASA. uses the metric system and they have a base here in Mississippi too.
Even if that were true, it would not be a reason to keep feet and inches.
In fact some bright spark might figure out that National Metrication would be a massive boost to the flagging economy of the USA - and Liberia, and where is that in the east?
ALSO - it might have escaped your attention but the US monetary system is one of the only things the US has been smart enough to decimalise!!!
The French also tried to metricate time, with 10 hours in a day, 100 minutes in an hour and 100 seconds in a minute. I wonder why this one never caught on?
That sounds pretty french.
U.S.A. U.S.A. U.S.A. we should have a base prime number measurement system and force the world to use it at gun point, just to fuck with everybody else. U.S.A. U.S.A. U.S.A.!
1,2,3,5,7,11,13,17,19,23,29,etc.
4 should be the only prime number.
I prefer the metric system. It makes it easier for you keep track of your units and of relationships between units so that you can focus on more complex problems.
Compared to the enormous saturation of computer/network technology and our reliance on it for calculation, memory, navigation, etc., the simplicity of the metric system has an infinitesimal bearing on falling mathematical abilities in children. The nature of modern entertainment-media consumption offers us immediate and continuous reward. I’m sure that also takes some of the hunger out of a kid for mastering more advanced math.
What’s puzzling to me is that a lot of kids aren’t even interested in the technology that affords them so much. Like they don’t care to know much about how it works. Sure they whiz around on the computer and their mobiles, and catch all the latest app fads, but from my experience they don’t know all that much about the technology beyond it’s user friendly OS.
Computers are neither metric nor imperial. Those are systems of conversion, with unit quantities irrelevant to the “ons” and “offs” that computers work with.
Computers just use binary uniformly without any need to convert internally. Their only conversions are for the sake of displaying information for humans to read, and converting humanly entered information back into uniform binary. For that, either imperial, metric or any other system of conversion could be used. Whichever system of conversion is used is no more easy for a computer to understand than any other system, so long as the conversion is programmed sufficiently well by humans.
I already said it was Myanmar (or Burma), not that anyone’s listening apparently.
The difference is in both. There’s the quantity of “stuff” that 1 unit denotes, and there’s the conversion between different types of units (which is all about relations, proportions and ratios). That goes for imperial to imperial, and metric to metric, as well as from one to the other.
Not at all. It’s probably an American thing to not realise how much wealth there is outside of their bubble.
I think he’s taking the piss…
I regard 10 as lacking factors, and 100 being too many increments between one unit and another. There’s the conflict between standardisation and accuracy, and the common preference for dealing in smaller quantities. Metric tends to win the former and Imperial the latter.
Interesting, but what I was talking about didn’t have anything to do with that. I was addressing the metric system’s affect on kids exercising their brains less and being less proficient in math, which seems like a funny connection to make.
The more complex things you force a person to learn, the more able they are to deal with complex things afterward.
Sure I get that, but that’s not why kids don’t excel at math → because the metric system isn’t complex enough…
Also, why don’t we just make everything unnecessarily complex if it’s good practice?
How do we know when we’ve taken complexity beyond necessity?
So nobody’s down with the base prime number measurement system? 
Because you have a goal, e.g. to have a standard system of measurement that works. The metric system accomplishes that and people agree it’s easy to use. Adding complexity doesn’t better achieve the original goal, although it might achieve some other goal (e.g. complexity to teach people to deal with complexity, but that sounds like busy work to me).
There are plenty of things for us to hone our thinking skills on that are out and out complex. We don’t need to make an intentionally obtuse system of measurement. That isn’t to say inches and feet etc. are intentionally obtuse/not a good system, but complexity just to make it complex would be.
Well what if the thing you’re measuring is in inches or feet? How you gonna know how long it is if all you have is a ruler that does mm and cm and what have you?
Plus I think it’s best to have the most complicated understanding of things that you can. That might even mean taking something as simple as making a sandwich, and turning it into a 140 step process. I mean you get what you put in man.
You’re not serious right?
Right. Well…I’m half serious about the second part.
Just checking. I enjoy these conversations more under the assumption you’re not serious.
I’m almost never serious.
But I do kinda prefer inches. As an American, I just kinda want everyone else to learn to do it our way because I wouldn’t wanna spend my time learning their way.
You asked for complexity… What’s wrong with learning the simple conversions so that you can work in either system of measurement? An inch is 2.54 cm. What’s so difficult about that? Or, 25.54 mm = 1 inch. That doesn’t strain the brain too much, does it?