Dear Ezra, While I consider the contributions by our valued member Pat to be thought-provoking and worthy of our consideration it is unfortunately by no means "the last word".
There are several aspects that MUST be taken into consideration when discussing this issue (and I have already vehicled quite a few of them here in this forum). But we should focus on the two most important ones: 1) Ease of use, and 2) Accuracy Taking the above aspects into account forces me to side with the UKMA on this. This does not detract from my believing that Pat's arguments also have merits, mind you! However, these 2 aspects are too important to pass up when it comes to deriving *policies for general use* of the metric system, which is what I think UKMA is all about. Again I must reinforce the concept that for someone to make a decision on what system to use an individual must make that choice on the basis of its user-friendliness (among other things evidently). Having said that I cannot shake the conviction (or blame one) that would prefer to deal with only 2 digits as opposed to 3 most of the time, especially if accuracy allows him/her to. And I've cited one of my professions (pilot) as a strong argument in favor of that position. If it is absolutely critical for the well being and proper/effective/efficient functioning of a certain profession that digits be kept to a minimal, then why force unnecessary accurate numbers on this community??? If one did that one would be seriously jeopardizing the very metric motto we are so fond of (a touts les peuples a tout le temps). And if, in addition to the above, there is no need or possibility of assuring certain accuracies why go through the hassle of using them when even its use would be scientifically questionable (or even wrong!). For instance, if I cannot reproduce my height to a millimeter accuracy why should I? I can only attest it to the cm value. Therefore, I have no choice even but to state it as 1.79 m. And if in this case the use of decimal values is "anathema", then fine, collapse it to 179 cm. But please let us notice that it would be scientifically *incorrect* to state this as 1 790 mm because we simply canNOT substantiate what my height is to that value of accuracy (it could be 1 793, or 1 792, or ...). Therefore, as a matter of general policy we canNOT in sane conscience condemn those who would demonstrate a preference for the use of "non-engineering" prefixes when the SI system is built and designed with flexibility in mind (otherwise why would it have defined such prefixes to begin with if not to allow their use???). So, let's please put this issue to rest for once and for all and allow professionals to handle how they should choose to operate. Let's also allow those who have strong preferences (for one reason or another) to stick with their way of thinking. I don't honestly think metric users would be bothered much by being subject to things like 1.7 m or 170 cm or 1 700 mm. We can handle ANY of these with ease. Anyways... my 2-cents worth... Marcus On Tue, 11 Nov 2003 02:04:03 ezras wrote: >Pat Naughtin has presented extensive arguments recommending that the "centi" >submultiples not be used when converting a country from Imperial units to SI. >However, the UKMA web site argues the opposite, claiming that the push to use only >submultiples separated by a factor of 1000 (10^3) from a base unit, such as >millimetres for lengths or distances larger than 1 mm but smaller than 1 m, continues >to foster the false impression (at least in the UK) that the SI is "good" only for >scientific and engineering disciplines rather than every domain and forces citizens >to use unnecessarily large numbers with those subunits -- numbers that are not user >friendly and that give a false indication of precision. > >I'm curious if anyone associated with the UKMA (Chris? Others?) would care to explain >why they have taken that position despite the information provided by Pat Naughtin. >(I'm still debating in my own mind which is the better way to go, so I'm very >interested in the potential discussion on this topic.) > >Ezra > > ____________________________________________________________ Get 25MB of email storage with Lycos Mail Plus! Sign up today -- http://www.mail.lycos.com/brandPage.shtml?pageId=plus
