I find your contributions below quite worthy of consideration, Madan. Thanks for sharing them with us. However, I'd like to make a small comment on the second one (please see below).
On Wed, 20 Mar 2002 06:12:28 ... >2. Never use decimals. > For ex - say your height in cm instead of meter, > like 171 cm instead of 1.71 meter. > Similarly it is better to say 1500 meters to give a > walking distance instead of 1.5 km. After all > measures like 5000 feet are given in roads. > Most people say >'thirty five dollars and fifty five cents' >instead of >'thirty five point five five dollars'. > I have mixed feelings about the above. Please let me explain why. First of all, we should NOT shun decimals. Decimals are always a part of the measuring exercise, it's just ludicrous to expect that we can avoid them altogether. Secondly, the very rules of SI usage would call for a preference for fundamental units when at least the unit 1 is achieved, like in the case of people's heights (usually human adults are all taller than 1 meter). Thirdly, there is some merit in avoiding intermediate prefixes such as d, c, da (or D) and h. Not that I'd go to extreme in doing that, besides we should always allow some room for convenience here and there, but as a general policy this seems to at least make some sense. On the other hand your example of the usage of dollars reminds me of how people report heights in Brazil, they usually say um metro e setenta e nove centmmetros (most often the word centmmetros is skipped altogether, it's obvious that the following number refers to the figure in cm, not mm due to popular usage) for 1.79 m, or in other words, 1 m 79 cm (some even write it like that, but without the spaces). I know that this would technically be wrong, but in popular parlance I see no harm in doing it. Perhaps this could be a nice compromise between your position stated above and mine. >We have to understand the people better and this is >just 1 step. I hope it will help our cause. > A very valid argument. Nonetheless, it's always a challenge to make SI usage more flexible while at the same time being technically correct, so to speak. From experience what I've found is that people are very comfortable using idiosyncrasies like the one above (1m79cm) and using it correctly when it counts, i.e. 1.79 m. In other words, we have absolutely no problem with "migrating" from the popular to the rigorous when the occasion requires. Marcus Is your boss reading your email? ....Probably Keep your messages private by using Lycos Mail. Sign up today at http://mail.lycos.com
