From: "Rob van der Heij" <rvdh...@gmail.com>
Sent: Saturday, January 04, 2014 11:03 PM
On 3 January 2014 17:26, Ray Mansell <r...@mansell.org> wrote:
Indeed, my post was intended to be tongue-in-cheek. My British sense of
humour often gets me in trouble here in the US.
They don't have any humour there (hoping to get spelling right as an alien)
I missed my chance to respond on Friday which would be more appropriate,
but since our newspaper today reported "60 cm" of snow in a town near
Boston, I could not resist.
There's a lot of truth behind your initial response. By reducing the number
of different units we use, there is a suggestion of precision that may not
be founded. Our "60 cm" most likely was 2 feet, and does support the two
significant digits (especially since snow depth is uneven, and more where
you have to clean it). I like the idea that Norway use a special unit for
10 km distance, so you can express longer distance without suggesting
precision.
You can always use dm, so it becomes 6dm.
