On 2007 03 8 9:42 AM, "Scott Hudnall" <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
> Looks like my arguments are bolstered by Bill Gates. > > http://www.komotv.com/news/6362592.html Dear Scott and All, You might be interested to read a letter that I sent to Steve Jobs (with a copy to Bill Gates) in December last year. Pat Naughtin PO Box 305 Belmont, Geelong, 3216 Victoria, Australia [EMAIL PROTECTED] Steven P Jobs Chief Executive Officer and Director Apple 1 Infinite Loop Cupertino, CA 95014 Dear Steve Jobs, I noticed that your company has released yet another series of products designed and built using metric units, such as nanometres and micrometres, and then designated and sold with the screens described as 'inches'. I am writing to let you know that I believe that this practice is having a devastating effect on the education of children and on the economies of nations all around the world. Consider the children. Whenever you use the word 'inch' you are asking each and every child in the world to learn about the old measurements used before the world upgraded to the metric system. You are aware that the USA is batting way below its development possibilities simply because every child in the USA has to learn about inches and their fractions and conversion calculations just so they can understand their computer screen size (and the inch defaults left lying about by Bill Gates in Microsoft Word). See my submission to President George W Bush's 'National Math Panel' (attached). What are the costs? In 1980, the Confederation of British Industry (CBI) surveyed its members after 15 years of British metrication. They found that: > ... the extra cost of continuing to work in dual systems of measuring was > around £5 000 million every year. (This was about 9 % of the 1980 UK GDP) For the large British companies on which the survey was based, the increased production cost for each company who used dual measures averaged at 11 % of the company¹s gross profit, and 14 % of its net profit when compared to a fully metric CBI company. If the lowest of these percentages (9 %) is applied to the USA economy as a whole and we make a bold, but not wild, assumption that it costs about 9 % of gross turnover to use dual measurements (metric and U.S. Customary) then based on a 2005 estimated Gross Domestic Product for the USA of 12.735 trillion dollars it currently costs the USA about 1.15 trillion dollars per year to use dual measures instead of metric units. I have used Apple products and Microsoft products since the 1970s and I have always regarded Apple Computers as an extremely progressive company. It saddens me greatly when you use a deeply flawed and seemingly dishonest labelling practice for marketing your computers. When you decide to, once again, be a progressive company could you please form your policy around the ideas of direct metrication, using nanometres, micrometres, millimetres, and metres. This will be of direct and immediate benefit to the Apple Company, children's education all over the world, and to the economies of companies and nations wherever Apple computers are sold. Best regards for your inch free future, Pat Naughtin Copies: Bill Gates, Microsoft Corporation, One Microsoft Way, Redmond, WA 98052-6399 Managing Director, Apple Computer Australia Pty Ltd, PO Box A2629, Sydney South NSW 1235 Submission to National Math Panel by Pat Naughtin, Geelong, Australia Pat Naughtin PO Box 305 Belmont, Geelong, VIC Australia 61 3 5241 2008 [EMAIL PROTECTED] National Math Panel Department of Education USA [EMAIL PROTECTED] Ladies and Gentlemen, I am writing in response to Executive Order 13398 and your inquiry into shortfalls in mathematics education in the USA. Specifically, I am responding to Section 1 of the Executive Order 13398: National Mathematics Advisory Panel that reads: > To help keep America competitive, support American talent and creativity, > encourage innovation throughout the American economy, and help State, local, > territorial, and tribal governments give the Nation's children and youth the > education they need to succeed, it shall be the policy of the United States to > foster greater knowledge of and improved performance in mathematics among > American students. I am aware that not being a citizen of the USA I live in Geelong, Australia could be seen as an impediment but I consider that I am a suitable respondent under: (iii) experts on matters relating to the policy set forth in section 1 (v) such other individuals as the Panel deems appropriate or as the Secretary may direct or simply as a faraway foreign friend of the USA. I am aware that the USA faces significant issues in the area of mathematics: · Almost half of American 17-year-olds do not have the basic understanding of math needed to qualify for a production associate's job at a modern auto plant. · On the most recent PISA test, American 15-year-olds performed below the international average in mathematics literacy and problem-solving. · Only seven percent of fourth-and eighth-graders achieved the advanced level on the 2003 TIMSS test. · Students from low-income families who acquire strong math skills by the eighth-grade are 10 times more likely to finish college than peers of the same socio-economic background who do not. · USA students are currently performing below their international peers on math and science assessments. And I agree with Secretary Spellings when she says that there is a 'need for today's high school graduates to have solid math skills whether they are proceeding to college or going straight into the workforce'. I am writing because I believe that almost all of these issues and problems will evaporate once you have adequate metrication policies and practices in place. I am writing to encourage you to support the use of direct metrication in USA schools. I recommend that your committee considers how best to encourage the use of the metric system in schools, to discourage the use of old pre-metric measures and, critically, to avoid conversions between measuring methods altogether. Let me refer back to the beginning of the 20th century when Alexander Graham Bell (1847/1922) said: > All the difficulties in the metric system are in translating from one system > to the other, but the moment you use the metric system alone there is no > difficulty. That in a nutshell is a major problem of the current mathematical education system. You have just spent 100 years trying to translate. 'from one system to the other' with little success. I suggest that you abandon this approach. Speaking of Alexander Graham Bell, I would like to recall an address that Dr. Bell gave to a House committee in support of a bill to switch to the metric system. This was exactly 100 years ago, in 1906. Fortunately, his speech, 'Our Heterogeneous System of Weights and Measures' was recorded in the March, 1906 issue of The National Geographic Magazine, and can be found at: http://lamar.colostate.edu/~hillger/laws/bell-1906-03.html There is also further, more recent, evidence that this approach does not work. Richard P Phelps in his paper, 'The Case for U.S. Metric Conversion Now' in Education Week (1992 December 9) estimated that each child in the USA currently spends around a year of their life at school learning how to convert from old measures to other old measures, or how to convert from metric units back to old pre-metric measures. In this article, Richard P. Phelps states: > It (USA education system) teaches two systems of measurement in the schools > and, the confusion from learning two systems aside, there is a cost to the > time spent in teaching two systems. A full year of mathematics instruction is > lost to the duplication of effort. You can view Phelp's article at: http://www.edweek.org/ew/articles/1992/12/09/14phelps.h12.html . When students from the USA are compared with students from other nations it is no wonder that they compare unfavourably given this (conversion) handicap. Lorelle Young, President of the United States Metric Association (founded in 1916) estimates that about 60 % of industry in the USA is now metric. As children who are currently in school leave for the world of work, they will mostly work in industries that are already predominately metric. As their schools have not prepared them to be in the workforce they will have to learn the mathematics they need 'on the job'. Personally, I disagree with Lorelle Young; I think that her estimate is too low. I travelled extensively in the USA from March to May last year and I found factory after factory internally using metric units for all their work and then, as I put it in an article in the USMA newsletter Metric Today, 'Dumbed it down at the door' of their factory so that others would not know that they preferred metric units internally. From an educator's point of view you need to investigate how much of this 'hidden metric' will be relevant to your students. Surely one of your goals is to prepare student for work in industry in the USA. Somewhat facetiously, I wrote about my experiences in the USA in an article entitled, 'Don't use metric!' that you can download as a pdf file from http://www.metricationmatters.com/articles. You might find this amusing but I wrote it with serious intent to highlight the fact that the USA is now all metric. There is now no activity in the USA that is not wholly based on the metric system. Sure many deny this, but while: · all medicine is totally metric, · all food values are totally metric, · every car, truck, and tractor is totally metric, and · every yard that a football team achieves is defined legally as exactly 914.4 millimetres they don't have much room to manoeuvre. In his 1906 address to the House committee, Alexander Graham Bell said, > Few people have any adequate conception of the amount of unnecessary labor > involved in the use of our present weights and measures. I believe that the cost of this 'unnecessary labor' is still with us. But I have seen few serious attempts to put a figure on this cost. My own researches have only found three attempts to answer this question. They are from Jos. V. Collins in 1915, Richard P. Phelps in 1992 (cited above), and some thoughts of my own in 2006. In 1915, Collins in 'A metrical tragedy' estimated the cost of non-metrication at that time as 'a total annual loss of $315 000 000'. You can find a full transcript of Jos. V Collins' article at: http://www.worldwideschool.org/library/books/socl/education/AMetricalTragedy /Chap1.html Richard P Phelps estimated that, 'there is a cost to the time spent in teaching two systems. A full year of mathematics instruction is lost to the duplication of effort'. My estimate of the cost of this wasted effort in the schools of the USA is about 85 billion dollars per year based on the idea that 10 % of the education budgets of the USA is wasted effort. My own estimates of non-metrication costs in the USA are based on a Confederation of British Industry (CBI) survey of its members about metrication in 1980 after 15 years of British metrication. They found that: > ... the extra cost of continuing to work in dual systems of measuring was > around £5 000 million every year (in the UK). For companies on which the survey was based, the increased production cost for each company who used dual measures averaged at 11% of the company¹s gross profit, and 14% of its net profit when compared to a fully metric CBI company. If the percentage (9 %) is applied to the USA economy as a whole and we make a bold, but not wild, assumption that it costs about 9 % of gross turnover to use dual measurements (metric and U.S. Customary) then based on a 2005 estimated Gross Domestic Product for the USA of $12.735 trillion dollars it costs the USA about 1.15 trillion dollars per year to use dual measures instead of metric units. My estimate sounded so outrageous that I was moved to compare it with Jos. V Collins' and Richard P Phelp's estimates of costs to the USA economy. In 1915, Collins wrote 'Total annual loss of $315 000 000' could be attributed per year to non-metrication in the USA. If you allow for inflation between 1915 and 2005, Collin's figure for annual losses becomes $6 100 000 000 per year. If Richard P Phelp's estimate of 10 % wasted costs in education were applied to the whole economy, the loss would be about $1.27 trillion per year. To paraphrase the USA Senator Everett McKinley Dirksen (1896/1969): a trillion this year, and a trillion next year, pretty soon adds up to real money. I wish the National Mathematics Advisory Panel every success with their deliberations, and I sincerely hope that you will achieve the goals as laid out in your charter. However, I don't think that you can achieve them unless you boldly confront the issues related to the international metric system. Please don't sweep it under the carpet yet again I even doubt that your great nation can afford to do so. Yours faithfully, Pat Naughtin 2006-05-26 P.S. If I can be of any further assistance to your committee please let me know. Pat is the editor of the 'Numbers and measurement' chapter of the Australian Government Publishing Service 'Style manual for writers, editors and printers'. He is a Member of the National Speakers Association of Australia and the International Federation of Professional Speakers. He is also recognised as a Lifetime Certified Advanced Metrication Specialist (LCAMS) with the United States Metric Association. You can find out more about him at http://wwwmetricationmatters.com
