On Sunday 31 January 2010 17:55:56 Robert H. Bushnell wrote: > This story shows again that we should not use centimeter. It is > too close to inch.
By that reasoning, we shouldn't use the liter because it's too close to the quart. I don't think that's the reason. The real reason, I think, is that most of us (exceptions being CJK and Ancient Greeks, who use the myriad, and Indians, who use 1,00,00,00,000) group digits in threes, and all but four of the metric prefixes are powers of 1000. Using two units, one of which is 100 times the other, is more likely to cause order-of-magnitude errors than using two units, one of which is 1000 times the other. Pierre -- La sal en el mar es más que en la sangre. Le sel dans la mer est plus que dans le sang.
