On 2008 Mar 17 , at 5:20 PM, Richard M wrote:
The centimeter also seems to be enshrined as the unit of choice for patient heights, at least where I work. You get the patient height from the patient in feet and inches, then you convert it to inches, and then you convert the inches to some horribly over precise number of centimeters...like 173.24 cm. I hate seeing patient heights listed to a hundredth of a centimeter.
Far from being a rebuttal to my earlier claims, Richard's message supports it.
He notes that patient's heights are commonly done in centimetres. As I stated earlier, the centimetres is virtually the ONLY SI unit using the "centi-" prefix. Richard is simply agreeing that the centimetres is in common use, which I agree.
He then goes on to note a horror story about how the centimetre is used in his place of work. That's a good enough reason to get rid of the centimetres entirely. (Of course, I agree that the foolish way they use centimetres could be replaced by an equally foolish way of using millimetres. In this case, fixing one problem might not fix the underlying problem.)
Bill Hooper 1810 mm tall Fernandina Beach, Florida, USA ========================== SImplification Begins With SI. ==========================
