Pat, I like your suggestion.
Let's try to persuade medical professionals to record body mass in grams from 0 g to 20 kg, and to record body mass in kilograms at 20 kg and more than 20kg. Gene. ---- Original message ---- >Date: Tue, 20 Jan 2009 07:44:30 +1100 >From: Pat Naughtin <[email protected]> >Subject: [USMA:42371] Re: Is there any literature on metrication in the US >aimed at immigrants? >To: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> >Cc: "U.S. Metric Association" <[email protected]> > > On 2009/01/20, at 6:22 AM, <[email protected]> > wrote: > > Better: "body mass in kilograms" as in Body Mass > Index (BMI). > > Dear Gene, > I think that there is a strong case for measuring > the mass of new born babies and young babies in > grams — and not in kilograms — as the main point > of interest with these small people is to know if > their body mass has changed and if so, which > direction it has taken — up or down. > To my mind, this is conceptually easier to see if > the baby has changed from (say) 3415 grams to 3073 > grams than it is from 3.415 kilograms to 3.073 > kilograms. > Generally, babies range from the world records of > 280 grams for the smallest surviving baby to 10 900 > grams for the largest recorded birth mass. So > babies' masses would be in whole numbers of grams > with a precision and accuracy usually to 4 and less > often to 3 or 5 digits. > To keep this accuracy and precision it would > probably be best to adopt a policy of measuring, > recording, and communication baby mass in grams > (only) until the child reaches 19 999 grams and then > changing to kilograms in whole numbers above 20 > kilograms. In this way you preserve the benefit to > the babies and to small children of the accuracy and > precision in grams until the error reduces to 1 in > 20 or 5 % of body mass...
