Dear John and All,
Anna's statement (below) is probably representative of most younger
Australians.
Some, much older, Australian's probably remember the last time they measured
their height - many years ago - in feet and inches. My mother-in-law, for
instance, remembers her height in feet and inches (though she's smaller than
that now), but on close questioning she says that she hasn't measured her
height for over forty years. In short, she has never measured her height in
any kind of metric units. Clearly how often any individual uses a particular
measure is in operation here.
Interestingly, I was discussing this with a secondary teacher within the
last few days. He said that almost all secondary school students knew their
height in centimetres, which they expressed in similar ways to Anna, "a
metre 73" or "one seventy three", or maybe "173 cm".
However, my teacher friend went on to say that the day before a student had
said to him, I'm 179 cm, and my father says that I'm nearly six foot. How
many centimetres do I need to grow to be six foot?'
Other than the interesting mishmash of units here there are some issues to
observe:
1 The son's mind-set is almost metric.
2 The father's mindset is probably a mixture of metric (for work) and old
units (for family and social purposes).
3 Both father and son are seeking bench marks so they can make comparisons
between themselves and others (dead or alive: eg, Your grandfather was a
six-footer.) Neither of them have yet developed any benchmarks in any form
of metric units.
As an aside, reporters, and especially sports reporters, are gradually
catching up to the secondary students when they report heights but they
don't have suitable benchmarks either.
I cannot, specifically, provide you with the guess you requested about the
proportions of people who use feet and inches compared to the proportion who
use metric units. I am confident, though, that the proportions are changing
toward metric, and I suspect that this is accelerating.
On the matter of measuring body mass in kilograms this is now almost
universal in adults because their doctors measure them (in kilograms) from
time to time to advise on dietary matters - stones and pounds are now
rapidly approaching extinction. Babies are a different matter and about half
of the babies listed in the Geelong Advertiser have their birth mass listed
in kilograms and the other half have their mass converted to pounds and
ounces before they are reported. Again I suspect the principle reason for
this is the lack of suitable benchmarks, such as the fact that the average
Australian baby has a birth mass of about 3.5 kg.
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin CAMS
Geelong, Australia
on 2001-03-04 04.22, kilopascal at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> 2001-03-03
>
> Some Australian members of the UKMA list note that they use either x.xx m to
> describe their height or xxx cm. And even kilograms. Pat, you have told us
> people still use the ft/in for heights in Australia. Is this universal or
> are there people who use SI to describe their vital statistics? Can you
> guess on to how it is broken down, as to how many use SI vs. FFU?
>
> John
>
> Keiner ist hoffnungsloser versklavt als derjenige, der irrtümlich glaubt
> frei zu sein.
>
> There are none more hopelessly enslaved then those who falsely believe they
> are free!
>
>
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Anna Langley" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
> Sent: Friday, 2001-03-02 14:39
> Subject: Re: [ukma] (fwd) Metric body height and weight
>
>
>> As another Australian educated type person, I tend to quote my height as
> "a metre 73" or "one seventy three", or maybe "173cm". Weight always in
> kilograms, rather too many of them I'm afraid!
>>
>> Anna
>>
>> --
>> Anna Langley - [EMAIL PROTECTED]
>> London UK
>
