Metric system in Elite

Gimi

Gimi
lokvette said:
Ohh not sure if anyone has said this but in Sweden they have a Swedish mile which = 10 Km, If I got that wrong sorry to any Swedes, im still gettting used to metric since moving from England :p
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I'm not Swedish, but Norwegian.
10km = 1 mil
It's pronounced much like "meal" as in eating, or "meek" but with the K replaced with an L.

Using the term mile in this context is discouraged and technically not correct.
It's a thing in all the Scandinavian countries, but the Swedes probably use it more.
 

Red Fox Four

Red Fox Four
Gimi said:
I'm not Swedish, but Norwegian.
10km = 1 mil
It's pronounced much like "meal" as in eating, or "meek" but with the K replaced with an L.

Using the term mile in this context is discouraged and technically not correct.
It's a thing in all the Scandinavian countries, but the Swedes probably use it more.
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Yeah I can confirm this as a Norwegian.

The unit "mil" is often used in Norway to describe 10km. For instance, if a Norwegian asks another Norwegian how far it is to get to a place (e.g. a place that is 65km away) they will usually be told that it's "6,5 mil" when telling them how far it is.

Saying "6,5 mil" is just shorter to say and just as easily understood.

But "mil" should not be mistaken for the imperial "mile" since 1 mile = 1,666~ kilometers which is far shorter than 1 "mil".

Anyways, looking into old units of measurement and how they were defined is quite interesting though and there's usually quite a bit of history linked to it (for those interested in that anyways).

E.g. 1 cubit is the length from the bottom your elbow to the tip of your middle finger, and is still (sort of) used in hedgelaying to determine the distance between the stakes in the hedge :)

Here is a funny piece by "The Frantics" where the Romans are changing from roman numerals to "decimal" system, and makes a point out of how weird other units of measurement and such seem when you are already used to a particular system.

It's only 3 minutes and audio only, but worth listening to :)

[video=youtube;fjFaKD9BuOc]https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fjFaKD9BuOc[/video]
 

Valethar

Valethar
BarFly said:
Hello,

the USA is a technical mess:
Miles, Feet and 3/7 of an inch and i'm 5'9" tall [big grin]
Acre,
Pound
Ounze
Fahrenheit
Gallon = 231 inch³ [down]
Pint
PSI (Pound-force per square inch)
my goodness - what a stupid system!

110 Volt

i had to deal a lot with that idiotic stuff, when i was setting up grinders in the USA. I mean real grinders - you know that kind of machinery, that makes out of a piece of steel an advanced highly precise part.
It needed some days to catch up with that system. But once figuered out it was handable but always feeled odd and it looked really stupid if you look into a blueprint of a part to grind and see numbers like 3 5/11 inch wide [woah]

Btw: Anybody seems to think about the USA as a technical highly developed country, but take a look at the middle of the country, somewhere in Arizona or Montana or South Dakota or Ohio or Indiana outside of the bigger cities (and even in the cities)...
You will see a lousy technical infrastructure, at the technical state of the 20ies (at its best) of the last century.
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I've been doing construction and woodworking since the late 70's, and have never seen inches measured in 7ths or 11ths. That must be some pretty arcane stuff they're doing.
 

BarFly

BarFly
Hello,

Valethar said:
I've been doing construction and woodworking since the late 70's, and have never seen inches measured in 7ths or 11ths. That must be some pretty arcane stuff they're doing.
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Got me? [up] of course, that numbers are quite unrealistic, i already wondered that no one mentioned that :)
Construction and woodwork is measured in 1/40 of an inch.
But:
With grinders we are talking about 1/10,000! of an inch = 2.5 thousands! of a millimeter = 0.00254mm. Thats quite another scale in size and measuring in inch and its fraction it becomes very uncomfortable to handle. Type that numbers into a computer, measure the parts... there is a reason the technical world works in metric.
 
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Micha

Micha
Shadowdancer said:
At least one error in there: Canada should be green.
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Ah; I had meant to comment on that map too - Australia is definitely in the green category too!
- We learn everything in metric, but are x-feet y-inches tall and weigh z stones. DIY is done with 2x4's.
- Our road signage is in kilometers, but when we talk, things are a few miles down the road and our cars use gallons of petrol per mile.
- We buy groceries by the litre and kilogram, but when cooking it's tea-and-tablespoons, a cup of this, a pinch of that, a pound of the other.
- Beer comes in stubbies, schooners, pots, and pitchers. In-keeping with the imperial spirit, they are not always the same size as you cross state boundaries. (Although apparently they've now been metrified so the 10fl oz (imp) "pot" is 285ml, not 284ml. Win! Otoh the 15fl oz schooner is only 285425ml. The thieving scumbags!)
- etc..
 
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Micha

Micha
BarFly said:
With grinders we are talking about 1/10,000! of an inch = 2.5 thousands! of a millimeter = 0.00254mm. Thats quite another scale in size and measuring in inch and its fraction it becomes very uncomfortable to handle. Type that numbers into a computer, measure the parts... there is a reason the technical world works in metric.
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Isn't 1/10,000's of an inch a mil? And no, nothing to do with the Norwegian mil! :)

I had to write some programs to deal with those many moons ago to do with PCB design. Nasty business keeping rounding errors to a minimum.
 

BarFly

BarFly
Hello,

Micha said:
Isn't 1/10,000's of an inch a mil? And no, nothing to do with the Norwegian mil! :)
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What is a mil?

But just in case [big grin] - not quite - it is:
1 inch (25.4 mm) divided through 10,000 = 0.0001 inch = 0.00254mm [big grin]

I had to write some programs to deal with those many moons ago to do with PCB design. Nasty business keeping rounding errors to a minimum.
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I really can imagine because we also had quite a few problems with rounding errors of our computers. It needs a while till we got it fixed. Ok, i'm talking about the mid 80ies but that is a problem.
Why?
At one point you have to start rounding. Because the measuring systems you can buy are all (maybe some stuff build in the USA ist not) leveled to metric system. And at this small scales we are talking about, there are a lot of zero behind the dot (in Germany comma).
 

Red Fox Four

Red Fox Four
BarFly said:
Hello,


What is a mil?

But just in case [big grin] - not quite - it is:
1 inch (25.4 mm) divided through 10,000 = 0.0001 inch = 0.00254mm [big grin]


I really can imagine because we also had quite a few problems with rounding errors of our computers. It needs a while till we got it fixed. Ok, i'm talking about the mid 80ies but that is a problem.
Why?
At one point you have to start rounding. Because the measuring systems you can buy are all (maybe some stuff build in the USA ist not) leveled to metric system. And at this small scales we are talking about, there are a lot of zero behind the dot (in Germany comma).
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I guess these days it depends if you define your variables as Integers or Floats, and how many decimal numbers you allow before rounding them. Pretty sure most systems today can handle converting inches and such regardless if they are rational or irrational numbers.
 

Micha

Micha
Ah, no, a "mil" is a thousand's of an inch, not a 1/10,000's. Misremembered.

As for programming, the best way to resolve rounding errors is to do all critical calculations in whole-number units (there's some good, although slow, infinite-precision libraries about) and do a final conversion calculation at the end.
 

BarFly

BarFly
Hello,

@Red Fox Four & @Micha
Of course you are right, today it shouldn't be a problem.
Thats the reason i mentioned that it was back in the 80ies. It was just to tell you that i understand what you are talking about :)
 

JesusRocks1988

JesusRocks1988
Incidentally, I wonder if there's ever been any large-scale confusion where some countries use a comma to refer to decimals, where others use periods?

For example in the UK - 1.578 is One Point Five Seven Eight. In mainland Europe, that might be expressed as 1,578.
Except back in the UK 1,578 means One Thousand, Five Hundred and Seventy Eight.

Though I am aware that in proper typographical practice, a decimal point is a distinct character from a period, but in common practice, commas and periods variously replace the proper decimal point character, as the decimal point is hidden behind an Alt+ number, and not readily available on a keyboard (and not present in all fonts).
 
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Red Fox Four

Red Fox Four
JesusRocks1988 said:
Incidentally, I wonder if there's ever been any large-scale confusion where some countries use a comma to refer to decimals, where others use periods?

For example in the UK - 1.578 is One Point Five Seven Eight. In mainland Europe, that might be expressed as 1,578.
Except back in the UK 1,578 means One Thousand, Five Hundred and Seventy Eight.

Though I am aware that in proper typographical practice, a decimal point is a distinct character from a period, but in common practice, commas and periods variously replace the proper decimal point character, as the decimal point is hidden behind an Alt+ number, and not readily available on a keyboard (and not present in all fonts).
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Not sure what the practice is in different countries.

I tend to use both comma and decimal to indicate decimals (in Norway that is), but I know in some countries the comma is a method to separate the thousands, while decimal is to indicate decimal numbers.

So to write "one hundred thousand point zero five" in numbers I would write 100000,05, but I know some places it would be written as 100,000.05

**edit** I got curious so I googled this. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Decimal_separator

Short story is that there should be no comma or point for grouping numbers so you would use just spaces for that, e.g. 100 000. It also states the fractions of a number is the numbers that follow after a comma or point in the number, so it's basically up to you to choose whether to use , or . but only use one of them.

Current standards
The 22nd General Conference on Weights and Measures declared in 2003 that "the symbol for the decimal marker shall be either the point on the line or the comma on the line". It further reaffirmed that "numbers may be divided in groups of three in order to facilitate reading; neither dots nor commas are ever inserted in the spaces between groups"[14] (e.g. 1000000000). This usage has therefore been recommended by technical organizations, such as the United States' National Institute of Standards and Technology[15]
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verminstar

Banned
verminstar
Some guys have more inches than other guys...no need to feel bad if ye just dont measure up, I fully understand the jealousy when Im in the changing rooms...those furtive looks of envy, not wanting to be seen looking cos they purely hetro and all that...or in denial...

Just doesnt sound right when ye convert it to centimeters...doesnt have the same effect on ¨dating sites¨ where ye got through the small talk and are getting down to the fun bit.

And so we use a mixture of both...and the world still turns, the sky hasnt fallen and its ok to feel...inferior when ye meet me in the changing rooms.

So cool being 6ft 5 inches tall...wait...what did ye think I was talking about?
 
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XW_Ziggy

XW_Ziggy
When it comes to the metric SI units, both a point and comma are permitted as the decimal marker, though a point is by far the most common usage.

The mistake most people make is they they then use either a point or a comma to clarify groupings of thousands because it helps with speaking the written number; Many countries that use a point as a decimal marker would write a million (to two decimal places) as 1,000,000.00 and a few countries in Europe would write it as 1.000.000,00. In context, both are unambiguous but they are also both wrong.

IF a number has to be written with grouping markers at all (preferences is no grouping markers) then a space should be used.

1000000.00, ideally
1 000 000.00, if markers are required.
 

GeneralIdea1964

G
XW_Ziggy said:
When it comes to the metric SI units, both a point and comma are permitted as the decimal marker, though a point is by far the most common usage.

The mistake most people make is they they then use either a point or a comma to clarify groupings of thousands because it helps with speaking the written number; Many countries that use a point as a decimal marker would write a million (to two decimal places) as 1,000,000.00 and a few countries in Europe would write it as 1.000.000,00. In context, both are unambiguous but they are also both wrong.

IF a number has to be written with grouping markers at all (preferences is no grouping markers) then a space should be used.

1000000.00, ideally
1 000 000.00, if markers are required.
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Which is what is wrong with SI standards.
Rather than adopting one or other of the conventions which already exist, they've chosen a third just as confused method.
Is the number from Ziggy's example
"1 million" or "1" followed by "000" and then "000.00".
A space is used in all writing to signify a break between one word and another. So it is completely unclear. Clearly!? 😏
 
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