As we like to shorten the way we say things, like our body dimensions (such as
saying that your are 'five-ten' tall and weigh 'one seventy five'), this makes
sense - you can describe your height as 'one eighty five'. Whether that is
1.85 m or 185 cm, they come to the same thing.
John F-L
----- Original Message -----
From: Bill Hooper
To: U.S. Metric Association
Sent: Tuesday, December 14, 2010 8:46 PM
Subject: [USMA:49206] Fwd: Human height and centimetres
On Dec 12 , at 1:20 AM, Pat Naughtin wrote:
Some time ago, I was involved in training police in my home state. We
confronted this problem head on when we measured the height of each police
trainee before and after exercise only to find that their height varied
(probably due to intervertebral disc compression). Eventually we decided that
the vest we could do to record and report the height of criminals was to use
metres with two decimals rounded to end with a 0 or a 5 so the person quoted
above would become 1.65 metres.
I have been using 1810 mm for my height for some time, after being convinced
by Pat of the fact that millimetres are better to use than centimetres.
Now, I believe I am convinced further that the normal variation in a persons
height is about 10 mm to 25 mm and so it would be appropriate to round off all
height measurements to the nearest 50 mm.
I think I will adopt that idea and change my signature to show my height to
the nearest 50 mm.
I think doing it in metres also has some value, at least for those who are
not frightened to death of fractions. Thus, instead of recording my height as
1800 mm I can show it as 1.80 m which shows the approximate degree of precision
better.
Bill Hooper
1800 mm or 1.80 m tall
Fernandina Beach, Florida, USA
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SImplification Begins With SI.
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