Dear Bill, Thank you for your compliment � although I'm not even sure what pedantry means � I'll look it up one day!
I am not a horse person, although I did have a race horse (18.2 hh) when I was very young � too young for the horse. However, I've just had another look at: http://www.lovelongears.com/hands.html and other than the records for small horses, and donkeys, and the records for large animals, the other dividing markers all ended with ' .2 ' or half a hand. It seems that the horse people are avoiding quarter and three quarter fractions of hands. This is a parallel to the old Australian police practice of guessing the heights of rapidly departing individuals with a difference of two inches � the preferred guesses were 5'2", 5'4", 5'6", 5' 8", 5'10", 6'. 6'2" etc � guesses with odd numbers of inches were known but were not preferred. I suspect that guessing heights (of horses and people) within 0.05�metres (~�2�inches) is probably about as good as we can guess at a glance � not only is a centimetre too small for guessing, but so too is an inch. If my observation is correct, it might be easier than we think to metricate the horse folk. The rules required are probably two: 1 All horse heights will be in metres 2 Horse heights will be rounded (up?) to two decimal places where the second digit is either 0 or 5. If they don't do this and decide instead for the 'soft conversion' approach, they could finish up like these people in the UK: http://www.romseyshow.co.uk/Horse_Classes/horse_classes.html where all the dimensions are clearly 'hidden hands'. With this approach I predict that the Romsey Show people will take upwards of 100 years for their metrication process. Cheers, Pat Naughtin LCAMS Geelong, Australia Pat Naughtin is the editor of the free online newsletter, 'Metrication matters'. You can subscribe by sending an email containing the words subscribe Metrication matters to [EMAIL PROTECTED] -- on 1/10/03 2:32 PM, Bill Potts at [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: > Note that I said "could," not "should." I also said "a growing horse" (whose > height would increase from one week to the next), not a full-grown hunter or > jumper. > > And I do know that the official definition of the hand is 4 inches. > > However, I yield to your superior pedantry. <g> > > Bill Potts, CMS > Roseville, CA > http://metric1.org [SI Navigator]
