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.
