Dear Pierre,
Maybe we're both wasting our time – even thinking about your prof.
See http://www.kotterinternational.com/Default.aspx?showvideo=true&ID=126
for a short video on this subject made by a leading expert on change
in any organisation, John Kotter.
You can find other John Kotter videos at
http://www.kotterinternational.com/OurWork/Videos.aspx
Cheers,
Pat Naughtin
Author of the ebook, Metrication Leaders Guide, that you can obtain
from http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html
PO Box 305 Belmont 3216,
Geelong, Australia
Phone: 61 3 5241 2008
Metric system consultant, writer, and speaker, Pat Naughtin, has
helped thousands of people and hundreds of companies upgrade to the
modern metric system smoothly, quickly, and so economically that they
now save thousands each year when buying, processing, or selling for
their businesses. Pat provides services and resources for many
different trades, crafts, and professions for commercial, industrial
and government metrication leaders in Asia, Europe, and in the USA.
Pat's clients include the Australian Government, Google, NASA, NIST,
and the metric associations of Canada, the UK, and the USA. See http://www.metricationmatters.com
for more metrication information, contact Pat at [email protected]
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On 2010/05/16, at 09:48 , Pierre Abbat wrote:
On Saturday 15 May 2010 19:00:52 Pat Naughtin wrote:
You might remind your professor of the contribution that two great
surveyors, Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, made to the
initiation of the metric system as a legal entity in France in the
1790s.
I probably did, but it doesn't help him think in metric. I've had
this prof
for a few years, and he's known all along that I think and measure
in metric.
One night we went out with two GPS units on poles, one adjustable
and set to
1.8 m, the other fixed at 2.0 m. He didn't notice the difference,
and started
to set it to 1.8 m. I know my height is 1.5 m and noticed that the
pole was
taller than 300 mm above my head. He has insisted that the Rational
Equation
(for computing runoff of rainfall) is empirical because it uses a
mishmash of
units. It isn't. It is a mathematically-derived equation, and the
mishmash of
units he uses happens to give an answer 121/120 of the correct one,
an error
which the acre-foot-ists choose to ignore. I've gotten almost
nowhere trying
to explain the equation in metric. He's taught Manning's equation
with a
funny-looking constant in it, which is there only because he uses it
with the
wrong unit. (The constant is the 2/3 power of the number of feet in
a meter.)
Pierre
--
When a barnacle settles down, its brain disintegrates.
Já não percebe nada, já não percebe nada.
