Robert: I prefer to give my height in meters. It's consistent with the quasi-informal "rule of 1000" and with the BMI formula (m/h²). The trouble with millimeters, in this case, is that they tend to imply a degree of precision that is neither present nor required. For engineering and construction (cf. the Australian example), millimeters are fine. Drawings needn't show any units for linear dimensions. Bill _____
Bill Potts W <http://wfpconsulting.com/> FP Consulting Roseville, CA <http://metric1.org/> http://metric1.org [SI Navigator] _____ From: [email protected] [mailto:[email protected]] On Behalf Of Robert H. Bushnell Sent: Wednesday, July 29, 2009 11:09 To: U.S. Metric Association Cc: [email protected] Subject: [USMA:45452] Re: Fw: default units for height It is good of you to promote metric height numbers. However, I do not like centimeter. I want schools to stop teaching and using centimeter. I also want schools to stop teaching inch-pound numbers. So, I want height to be in millimeters. The number can be to the nearest 10 millimeters. Body mass index BMI uses height in meters, often shown with two decimal places, that is, to centimeter resolution. I say we should get used to millimeter height and make it a habit to shift to meters for BMI. Thanks for all your good work. Robert Bushnell On Jul 29, 2009, at 8:10 AM, Paul Trusten wrote: Another small victory for the metric system in heathcare! I wote to the author of Global RPh, an extremely useful Web site for pharmacists' drug information. Within its armaementarium are quite a number of calculators for things like body service area, creatinine clearance, and other values. When you first get to each of these calculators, the default measurement units are kilograms for weight, but INCHES for height! This might be dangerous! So, yesterday, I finally broke down and wrote the author, asking him to please change the default for height to centimeters. As you can see, he agreed. ----- Original Message ----- From: D. McAuley, GlobalRPh <mailto:[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: 29 July, 2009 06:42 Subject: Re: default units for height Hello Paul, In the past I tried to keep everyone happy.... however, I think its time to have default metric selections. It will probably be some time next week before these changes are made. Thank you for the suggestion.... Dave ----------------------------------------------- David McAuley, Pharm.D., R.Ph. GlobalRPh Inc. [email protected] ----------------------------------------------- --- On Mon, 7/27/09, [email protected] <[email protected]> wrote: From: [email protected] <[email protected]> Subject: default units for height To: [email protected] Date: Monday, July 27, 2009, 6:38 PM Below is the result of your feedback form. It was submitted by ([email protected]) on Monday, July 27, 2009 at 20:38:10 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- subject1: Globalrph form MessageType: Suggestion comments: On your calculators, please consider setting your Web sites default units for patient height to centimeters instead of inches. Your default units for weight are in kilograms. Only metric units should be used for patient parameters. name: Paul Trusten, R.Ph. verifyemail: [email protected] Telephone: (432)528-7714 --------------------------------------------------------------------------- REMOTE_ADDR: 12.154.32.242 HTTP_USER_AGENT: Mozilla/4.0 (compatible; MSIE 7.0; Windows NT 5.1; .NET CLR 1.1.4322; .NET CLR 2.0.50727; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.30; .NET CLR 3.0.04506.648; .NET CLR 3.0.4506.2152; .NET CLR 3.5.30729; InfoPath.2)
