Kilopascal wote in USMA 8704: >Here are some comments I posted to the Yahoo website with my feelings on >selling SI based on ease of math compared to FFU. In summary my point >is/was, that the average American does not do fractional math, limits >his/her use of FFU to a few simple units, and does no or very little >converting between them. The average American knows FFU is difficult, but >also believes SI must be equally difficult. So adopting metric units would >be exchanging one difficult system for another. This notion needs to be >dispelled and proven before the general population agrees to change. > >You won't convince the average person who muddles through FFU that metric is >easier to use. Especially if that person doesn't do the complex math in >his/her daily life that we show in examples. I've seen how people measure >rooms for carpet. They measure or round to the nearest foot, then take that >info to the carpet store, and the guy there converts it to the nearest >square yard and that is what they buy. Joe Six-pack never does the math. >So, telling Joe metric would make it easier will go in one ear and out the >other. I found support for John's note in a report on metrication in Australia from the Department of Science and Technology dated July 1982: "The lack of interest in adult education confirmed the Board's belief that such courses were unneccessary and that people would learn from experiencing metric units in practical day to day situations as and when each individual requires. "It also confirmed that people do not perceive metric in systematic form but learn each unit and its application as an independent and unrelated piece of information. As a consequence the highly logical nature of the metric system or the unsystematric nature of the impeerial system had very little meaning or relevance for the ordinary system. Re-education of ordinary people must therefore concentrate on providing a new set of metric benchmarks and avoid irrelevant references to the elegance of the metric system."
