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0 pointsadrianratnapala7y ago0 comments

> The "intuitive" argument comes up a lot in relation to units of measure, and it just makes me wonder how people can have such lack of self awareness.

As someone who has grown up with a mix of various Imperial (not US) measures and metric ones, I often find some more intuitive than others even when I am familiar with both.

The most obvious his human height. A tall man is about 6' or more. Most people are some number of inches less than that. Moreover, the inch and not the centimetre is roughly the amount at which you would casually notice two people were slightly different in height.

On the other hand, for horizontal distance, metres (or yards) make more sense than feet. To the extent that when American tell me how far away something is in feet, I just multiply by three before trying to use the info.

I think weight in stones is similarly better than either kilos or or pounds, but I am personally more familiar with kilos.

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wtmt7y ago· 1 in thread

> On the other hand, for horizontal distance, metres (or yards) make more sense than feet. To the extent that when American tell me how far away something is in feet, I just multiply by three before trying to use the info.

Wouldn’t you divide (rather than multiply) by three to get the distance in yards, which would be closer to meters?

adrianratnapalaOP7y ago

No, when people say "The thing is N feet down the road", I find that it is really N yards down the road. That is, I multiply the distance by three.

Though it's true, the alrgorithm for doing the multiplication happens to is `s/feet/yards/`

paol7y ago

My argument is not that all measurement systems are equally ergonomic, it's that you can't reach any conclusions about ergonomics by examining your subjective experience of a system you grew up with and use every day vs. one you don't.

This is what I though would be blindingly obvious, but apparently isn't.

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