Tom,
You ask "Do you really think trying to remember your height as 1740 mm
is easier to envisage than 174 cm?" My answer is yes indeed, if all
other size
measures in life are in millimeters.
It is wrong to say that millimeter is "badly scaled and over-precise".
It just depends on your being used to it.
On TV today it was said on Charlie Rose that in politics the way
to win is to give the opponent an easy way to give up his position.
In this discussion of giving up centimeter we have not found an adequate
easy way to give up centimeter. So, there is more work to do for
millimeter.
Robert Bushnell
On Aug 4, 2009, at 4:53 PM, Tom Wade wrote:
I want everyone to stop using centimeter. How are we to convert to
SI if, when we hear centimeter we think, "now how many inches is
that"?
Try stop asking "how many inches is that".
Centimeter causes this problem because it is near the size of the
inch.
This makes it hard to stop using inches. People keep comparing
centimeters to inches.
Millimeter does not have this problem.
People who don't want to move away from inches will still convert
whether it is cm or mm you try to use. This is a very bad reason
for replacing a natural and simple prefix for height (cm) by a
badly scaled and over-precise one (mm). Ultimately what you want
to encourage is to start thinking in the new unit, and therefore
you want to select the unit which will give you the easiest range
of values to envisage. Do you really think trying to remember your
height as 1740 mm is easier to envisage than 174 cm ?
Tom Wade
