| I shop at Ikea ( http://www.ikea.com/ms/en_US/ ) from time to time (OK a lot!). Since this is a Swedish chain, everything is primarily in hard metric sizes. Their US stores have imperial measurements listed, but as the secondary measure. If you have never been to an Ikea, here is how it works. When you enter the door, you pick up a little pad, pencil, and paper tape measure - with cm printed on one side, in on the other. You then go to the showroom floor. When you see items you like, you can take notes on your little pad, take measurements, and write down the aisle/bin information for when you go to the warehouse section of the store. Anyway.... when I go shopping, I notice that immigrants (the SF Bay Area is almost 40% foreign-born) are definitely using the cm side of the paper tape measure. But I was surprised to see a lot of US-born shoppers are also using the cm side of the tape and discussing measurements in cm. This is probably because of the nice round numbers. It would be interesting to have a sociologist observe shoppers at Ikea and OBSERVE what their metric usage habits are. A measuring choice, along with a measuring tool is given to customers and MANY of the customers (not just the immigrants) CHOOSE metric measurements, because it is easier to do the mental math on the showroom floor. Regarding FMI: It is ridiculous of them to make a blanket claim that "Americans don't understand metric". The SF Bay Area had a population of 6,783,760 in the 2000 census. The number of foreign-born residents was 1,855,802. Presumably at least 1,855,802 people in the SF Bay area understand metric - probably more. The median age is 36.3 , so half the population is young enough that metric was taught to them in school. I don't know which "America" the FMI is talking about when they claim that "Americans don't understand metric" , but a lot places in America have similar demographics. I think the "America" to which they are referring is 1950's America. |
