Thank you. I will consider what you say. On 2011/04/03, at 21:47 , Ametrica wrote:
> You said that height varies from 8 mm to 38 mm with a mean of 23 mm. This to > me sounds too much like 5/16 inches and 1-1/2 inches with a mean of 7/8 > inches. In other parts of your post you advocate rounding to 5 or 10 mm, so > why not in this case? One can say that height varies from 10 to 40 mm during > the day with a mean of 25 mm. This way it doesn't appear to be hidden USC or > imperial. > > > [USMA:50262] Human height > Pat Naughtin > Sun, 03 Apr 2011 00:39:10 -0700 > > Dear John, > > I quote from your article that you sent to Paul Rittman: > My Canadian citizenship card shows my height as 178 cm. This could also be > stated as 1.78 m, which is how citizens of mainland Europe would describe > their > height. Either way, it can be orally expressed as 'one-seventy-eight'. If > the listener thinks in metres rather than centimetres, the decimal point is > implicit – we do this anyway in other areas, such as when looking at prices > in, > say, supermarkets: “Which brand of pork pie do you want, dear – the shop's > own > at one-ninety-nine, or the national brand at two-forty-three?” 'Dear' knows > without explanation you mean £1.99, not £199.00. Notwithstanding Pat > Naughtin's comments to the contrary, I think if we tried to use millimetres > in > expressing our height to each other, that would kill metric in every day > usage > right from the start. Sad, maybe – but likely true. > > I would like to correct you on one point. I have never advocated the use of > millimetres for human height. Truth to tell I have mulled over human height > and > its best expression for many years. > > I recommend that we use metres with two decimal places where the second > decimal > place is rounded up to the next 0 or to the next 5. > > For example. I just measured my height as 1.83 metres. I would record this as > 1.85 metres. The time is currently 17:30 in Geelong. > > As you know the centimetre is not sufficiently accurate for measuring human > height because we vary too much throughout each day. When we wake in the > morning -- and before we rise out of bed -- we are at our maximum height > (length in this case). During the day we will shrink as the disks in our > backbone and other joints lose moisture and become compressed. This amount of > compression varies from person to person but I have seen it recorded in a > range > from 8 millimetres to 38 millimetres with a mean of 23 millimetres. Because > of > this variability I cannot recommend centimetres for measuring and recording > human height and similarly I cannot recommend that you record human height > using millimetres. > > By the way height in metres to two decimals is the way that the medical > community in Australia measures and records human height. No doubt this makes > it easy for them to then calculate things like Body Mass Index (BMI) and Body > Surface Area (BSA). > > Cheers, > > Pat Naughtin LCAMS > Author of the eboo Pat Naughtin LCAMS Author of the ebook, Metrication Leaders Guide, see http://metricationmatters.com/MetricationLeadersGuideInfo.html Hear Pat speak at: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_lshRAPvPZY 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] or to get the free 'Metrication matters' newsletter go to: http://www.metricationmatters.com/newsletter to subscribe.
