Interestingly enough for distances we would not say '200' for yards and '10'
for miles but we do 'go unitless' on speed - eg 'We topped 140' - with the
colloquialism extending to 100mph being called a 'ton' (do km countries refer
to a ton like that?). However most of our (long) distance signs are unitless.
BTW - with 'step down' measures (like 11 stone 11 as used below) time uses the
same model - ie 'it took 4 minutes 20'
From: j...@frewston.plus.com
To: usma@colostate.edu
Subject: [USMA:47453] Re: Bespoke tailoring
Date: Sun, 30 May 2010 19:47:27 +0100
In January 2009, I wrote an article in the UKMA's
Metric Views, suggesting that we have to make metric 'user friendly' if we want
to get people to use it in every day speech. This may mean accepting
various colloquialisms. This is an excerpt from that article, and
reinforces what Ezra has just said:
Ask an American how tall he is and how much he weighs, and he will likely
answer something like “Five-ten and one-sixty-five” Implicit in this is
the fact that ‘five-ten’ refers to five-feet-and-ten-inches, and
‘one-sixty-five’ refers to 165 pounds. The British may add the word
‘foot/feet’ (Five-foot-ten) and give their weight in stones
(eleven-stone-eleven). We need to get metric usage on similar lines.
My Canadian citizenship card shows my height as 178 cm. This could also
be stated as 1.78 m, which is how citizens of continental Europe would describe
their height. Either way, it can be orally expressed as simply
‘one-seventy-eight’. If the listener thinks in metres rather than
centimetres, the decimal point is implicit - we do this anyway in other areas,
such as when looking at prices in, say, supermarkets: “Which brand of pork pie
do you want, dear - the shop’s own at one-ninety-nine, or the national
brand at two-forty-three?” ‘Dear’ knows without explanation you mean £1.99
and £2.43, not £199.00 and £243.00. Notwithstanding Australian expert Pat
Naughtin’s comments to the contrary, I think if we tried to use millimetres in
expressing our height to each other, that would kill metric in every day usage
right from the start. Sad, maybe but likely true.
Same for our weight. It’s quite easy to simply say ’seventy-five’ (for
75 kg). Some may prefer to add the word ‘kilos’ (ugh!) after it. If
the unit MUST be added, Canadians and Americans will likely say ‘kaygees’
(ugh!!!). But saying ‘kilograms’, although technically correct, just
sounds so, well, technical (and even a bit pompous). A turn-off for too
many people.
John F-L
----- Original Message -----
From:
ezra.steinb...@comcast.net
To: U.S. Metric Association
Sent: Sunday, May 30, 2010 7:35 PM
Subject: [USMA:47452] Re: Bespoke
tailoring
Ironically,
the same line of reasoning I came up with for using millimeters for the
garment industry leads me (perhaps surprisingly) to the conclusion that
centimeters are actually the right submultiple of the meter for specifying
human height.
So, for instance, I would imagine law enforcement
authorities would be trained to use centimeters when metricating from feet
and
inches ) and not meters for the same reasons that millimeters are best for
the
building trades and for engineering: they are the right "order of magnitude"
for the precision required (nearest whole centimeter is good enough) and you
then can use whole numbers to sweep away vulgar fractions and compound unit
expressions.
By sticking rigorously to expressing heights as, say 150
cm, you break the old Imperial habits and get nice clean usage of metric (as
opposed to getting "one and a half meters" or "one meter fifty centimeters"
if
you tried to get those folks to say 1.5 meters, which for many will fail just
because their deeper Imperial mind set will corrupt their thinking). By the
same token, millimeters would truly be overkill and put people off since
something like 1500 mm would seem to most as both outlandish and ludicrous
(and unnecessary since centimeters gets you the whole numbers you need to
wean
those folks off of Imperial).
-- Ezra
----- Original Message
-----
From: "ezra steinberg" <ezra.steinb...@comcast.net>
To:
"U.S. Metric Association" <usma@colostate.edu>
Sent: Saturday, May
29, 2010 2:55:48 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: [USMA:47451] Re:
Bespoke tailoring
Where this
line of reasoning is taking me is that engineering and the building trades
may
have benefited from a happy confluence of two different factors: appropriate
precision for their measurement needs (by using millimeters) and the use of
whole numbers to sweep away the Imperial mindset of vulgar fractions (1/3,
1/2, 3/4, etc.) and compound unit expressions (3 ft 6 in) without having
to re-educate people to use decimal fractions (again, by using millimeters).
Two very powerful reinforcing attributes to promote rapid adoption of
metric!
In an area like the garment industry it gets a little trickier
just because millimeters do seem to be "overkill" and centimeters do seem to
be more aligned with the order of magnitude of precision required for those
kinds of measurements. However, I am inclined to believe that it is more
important to stamp out the old Imperial mindset of vulgar fractions and
compound unit expressions, which argues then in favor of using
millimeters.
Once a whole new generation grows up knowing nothing but
metric (and trained to be comfortable and accurate converting between
different submultiples of a unit and using decimal fractions and moving
decimal points), then maybe the people in that industry might decide on their
own to switch to centimeters. And if not, no harm done either to my
mind.
Cheers,
Ezra
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pat
Naughtin" <pat.naugh...@metricationmatters.com>
To: "U.S. Metric
Association" <usma@colostate.edu>
Sent: Saturday, May 29, 2010
2:08:54 PM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: [USMA:47449] Re: Bespoke
tailoring
Dear Ezra,
Well said! Let me qualify that – Extremely well said!
I will now go away and cogitate.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
On 2010/05/30, at 04:35 , ezra.steinb...@comcast.net wrote:
Pat's
last example:
How many 7
1/2 centimetre strips
can I cut from 3/4 metre of fabric?
with
How many 75
millimetre strips can I
cut from 750 millimetres of fabric?
could easily be
recast as
How many 7.5 cm strips can I cut from 75 cm of
fabric?
Now the answer is as evident as when using millimeters,
namely, 10.
But perhaps the issue has to do with converting the
mindset of people who use vulgar fractions all the time (because they use
or
did use Imperial) and will want to keep using them even when decimal
fractions are the only kind you should use in metric.
I can see then
that the value of "breaking" the vulgar fraction mindset (and even worse
the
compound units mindset that leads to monstrosities like 1 m 35 cm in place
of 1.35 m or 135 cm by analogy with, for example, 3 feet 7 inches) by
always
using whole numbers (which is what millimeters permit). Thus, this breaking
of the old mindset could be what outweighs the possible cumbersomeness or
false precision implied by using millimeters in place of centimeters for
lengths that are either whole centimeters or a decimal fraction thereof to
only a single place (digit).
In other words, if you were dealing with
a populace that already knew only metric and was comfortable with decimal
fractions, you could use centimeters in the garment industry with no
problems whatsoever. However, given the Imperial mindset of the current
workers, it may be the right thing to do to sweep away all fractions in
order to pave the way for smooth metrication even if millimeters seems to
be
a bit of "overkill".
For your consideration
...
Ezra
----- Original Message -----
From: "Pat Naughtin"
<pat.naugh...@metricationmatters.com>
To: "U.S.
Metric Association" <usma@colostate.edu>
Sent: Saturday, May 29, 2010
4:58:52 AM GMT -08:00 US/Canada Pacific
Subject: [USMA:47447] Re: Bespoke
tailoring
Dear Tom,
Sorry for the delay in responding to your email.I have been a little
bit busy – and I still am.
So to remind you that I am still thinking about the issues you raise, I
have extracted this short quote from
http://www.metricationmatters.com/docs/centimetresORmillimetres.pdf that seem
to me to be relevant
inside a textile production company.
##
Think about bricklayer's assistants and note
that we are not talking about intellectual giants here. These folk had
little trouble adjusting to house plans that contained numbers like 22 800
millimetres for the length of a wall. One of the reasons for this, I think,
is that the big numbers have given their users four distinct advantages on
a
building site:
1 You don't have
to remember the unit of measurement – it's always a millimetre.
2 There are
never any fractions.
3 There are
never any decimal points.
4 Calculations
are mostly simple, but if they're not, they can — without any conversions —
be fed directly into a calculator.
Compare this with the issues confronted by a
textile worker (say a weaver) who still has to:
5 Remember which
unit, or units, of measurement they are currently using.
6 Negotiate
halves and maybe quarters and eighths of metres and centimetres.
7 Negotiate
thirds of yard for feet; and 36ths of yards for inches.
8 Almost always
have decimal points with varying numbers of digits to the right of
them.
9 Perform
calculations that might involve vulgar or common fractions, mixed numbers,
decimal fractions or a combination of all of these.
10 Perform
calculations by pen and paper methods, as electronic calculators are not
good with fractions.
For example, compare:
How many 7
1/2 centimetre strips
can I cut from 3/4 metre of fabric?
with
How many 75
millimetre strips can I
cut from 750 millimetres of fabric?
I know which I'd prefer to do.
##
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
On 2010/05/28, at 23:13 , Tom Wade wrote:
However, as an engineer, I am pretty sure that if the
finished clothes are to be sized to the centimeter, the pattern pieces
will need to be cut to better than whole centimeter accuracy.
Further, the practice is that ALL engineering drawings (at least
for things under 100 m) be in millimeters, and I would interpret the
pattern as an engineering drawing. To the degree that
sub-centimeter accuracy is required in the pattern or cutting, I think
that manufacturing in millimeters is preferable to 0.1 cm. The
finished product can still be labeled and advertised in whole
centimeter
sizes.
What you say makes perfect sense. From
the producer's prospective, it would seem more logical to use mm in the
design and cutting, but from the consumer's perspective, cm would be a
more logical choice to use in labelling.
I believe the choice of
prefix comes down to:
- A prefix that results in whole numbers is
preferable to one that requires the use of decimals.
- A prefix that
results in smaller whole numbers is preferable to one that results in
unnecessarily large numbers, or an unnecessarily exact
precision.
The first would mean you'd choose 46 mm rather than 4.6
cm, and would mean where a greater precision than 1 cm is required, mm
would be the preferred choice (and this would therefore be the case in
the
majority of applications).
The second would mean you'd choose a
clothing dimension of 102 cm rather than 1020 mm, or a height of 174 cm
rather than 1740 mm *provided* you never need a precision greater than 1
cm. Note the the first guideline would mitigate against choosing
1.02 m or 1.75 m (whole numbers preferable to decimals).
Tom
Wade
Pat Naughtin
Author of the ebook, Metrication Leaders Guide, that you
can obtain from
http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat
Naughtin, has helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to
the modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they now
save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for their
businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many different trades,
crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial and government metrication
leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA. Pat's clients include the Australian
Government, Google, NASA, NIST, and the metric associations of Canada, the
UK,
and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com for more metrication
information, contact Pat
at pat.naugh...@metricationmatters.com or to get the free
'Metrication matters' newsletter go
to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter to
subscribe.
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