Fun penis fact: if you tell people you're 6.5 inches, it sounds like you're trying too hard to get that last bit of length. If you instead say 17cm, that's just how long you are.
You're welcome, fellow penis owners.
You can see this was made by an American.
Because why would the European use decimals for their own height? Just so it rounds to the nearest inch? Unlikely.
Particularly one who doesn't understand significant figures. Are you certain that you're precisely 74.000 inches, without even a thousandth of an inch of rounding? If not, you don't get to use 5 sigfigs when converting.
That's the joke my friend
I thought the joke was that the bald guy only accepts "n feet m inches" (0 ≤ m < 12) and any other format is not allowed
Making me divide by 12: that’s a paddlin’.
> console.log(`${Math.trunc(74/12)}' ${74 % 12}"`) 6' 2"I never could understand why they made us learn multiplication tables up to twelve. This is why, isn't it?
We only went up to ten in germany, so yea probably.
Also my god those things are pointless.
Now if only we used a duodecimal number system. Then I could divide by 2, 3, 4, and 6 while staying within the integers for as long as possible. And someone who is 6' 2" would just be 6212"
About 27 Big Macs.
Wait I've checked this, a Big Mac is 3,5 inches in height. That's 94,5 inches not 74.
Seriously, I'm an European and don't know what I am talking about. Inches, Feet, Legs, Elbows... Lol only in america.
Historians will get the Elbow joke.
Otherwise known as 1 trump of breakfast burgers
Fuck your freedom units. I'll stick to sane units of measurement thank you.
So you use SI units?
Most of them, I hadn't heard of the term until your reply., never used Kelvin, mole or candela before.
Personally I find 6 big unit + 2 small unit easier to visualize compared to a large number of small units 🤷♂️
That's the joke: 188cm (ignore the mm) are 1m 88, easy as pie. Meanwhile inches to feet...
188cm is 1m + 88cm or 2m - 12cm
Use decimetres I guess
everyone is gonna look at you funny but you'll have your medium sized units
18 big unit + 7 small unit
I've gotten so sick of working with people in multiple timezones that I've just started using UTC for everything.
Fuck you for living in a different sliver of the planet. You aren't gonna make me do all the math. I'm bringing you down with me.
Let's see them tremble when daylight savings time ends.
Your comment made me realize how we take for granted that everyone at least measures time the same way. Imagine the clusterfuck if there was metric time & imperial time.
Thank colonialism
Imagine we determined seasons based on the birds flying into a meadow in Japan
Or we measured days in quarters like Thailand (France forced their neighbours to use 24h time but since Thailand…then Ayutthaya and later Siam were never colonized they kept their weird clocks)
Russia never adopted leap years so that’s why Russian New Year is at a different time than the rest of us
There is metric day and UTC day.
Oh, the French did try to "metric" time for awhile when the metric system was just being developed and introduced. And even they decided that was a very bad idea. Turns out Mother Nature does not care about base10 all that much when it suits her.
On the other hand, it did lead to the saying that "The French follow no one and no one follows the French"
This is the sole reason why decimal time, which was also part of the metric system when it was first used, never caught on. The benefits of metric are that it's unambiguous and standard, but that was already the case for time so there wasn't any reason for it to change.
Worth noting though, parts of the world use a different calendar system, but AFAIK the Gregorian calendar is unambiguously the one used when communicating internationally. Good thing other calendars don't share month names with it (I think?) and that no one uses the Julian calendar anymore.
Haha I work with people in the Midwest and west coast and do this too. But I still have to whip out the UTC time converter, so it’s 90% of the work just to be a bit of a pest.
I want to use TAI time zone. It's 37 seconds ahead of UTC and doesn't have leap seconds.
idk if all my calendars around me have been implementing it wrong, but if not, UTC is also affected by daylight savings, making it the same time zone as GMT
UTC isn't supposed to be affected by daylight savings, neither is GMT which should be UTC+0. During daylight savings the UK changes to BST, which is GMT+1
Metric system:
- Tons of great subdivisions
- Continuously and exclusively use the same two or three prefixes for everything ever
That's 0.00934 furlongs!
0.093 cricket strips.
Oh shit.
How I feel about meters per second that gets changed to miles per hour and I just want kilometers per hour
M/s to km/h is nowhere near as bad as any of the imperial conversions though. (M*60*60)/1000... Or, M*3.6 if you want to simplify it.
How dare you make me do math
Do Europeans really give their height in cm? You'd think they short hand it like to like 1.7m or whatever since height is one of those things that doesn't really need to be exact and will change by a cm or so based on the kind of shoes you are wearing, or wearing shoes at all.
In my native language we say the equivalent of 'one and eighty-five' to refer to 185 cm of height, so basically we give it in meters.
Unless you happen to be 2 meters tall, yes, you would give your height in cm. You might round it, but you'd never say you're 1.8m tall.
In France it's generally in meters with two decimals, so basically the same as giving it in cm
Not europe but yes, we do it in cm. Never heard people rounding up or down to the tenth though, so 164cm is 164cm, not 160cm.
Yes where I live, we use cm usually. Also height is almost always measured without shoes
176cm would be given as "eins-sechsundsiebzig" in German, literally translating to one six and seventy (yeah it's backwards), which works exactly like currency.
Not European, but from a country that also uses the metric system. We give out our height in meters, as you said. Saying it in cm would be okey for medical reasons I suppose. Also there isn't much difference in what unit you use, you just have to multiply/divide by 100, which is easily done in your head
Germans do go with meters when talking about their height but they'll give you two decimal places.
You always do it in cm wherever I've been. It's either directly in cm, as in 172 cm or phrased in meters, as in 1.72 m. You cab say you're around 170 cm tall or around 1.7 m tall, but the 'default precision level' is 1 cm
Do North Americans really give their weight in lb? You'd think they'd short hand it like to like 15 stone or whatever since weight is one of those things that doesn't really need to be exact and will change by a lb or so based on the time of day and what you've eaten.
When using feet and inches, its fine to use precision of 1 inch as it's much smaller unit than 0.1 m.
If one says that they are 5'11" (180.34 cm), they can be 5'10.5" (179.07 cm) to 5'11.5" (181.61 cm) tall. That's 1.4% variance.
If using meters with one decimal place, and say they are 1.8 m (5'10.9"), they can be 175 cm (5'8.9") to 185 cm (6'0.8") tall. That's 5.6% variance.
Thus it's not really viable to use only one decimal place when using metres as unit, so in many languages it's easier to just say the length in centimeters compared to use two deeimal places.
That also explains why the guy in the comic is being an ass or an idiot by listing his height to the nearest hundredth of a centimeter. A half inch or whole centimeter are more appropriate precisions for human heights. In your example even, a real-world measurement of 5' 11" can't just be blindly translated to 180.34cm because it adds precision that was not there in the 5' 11" measurement unless otherwise specified. 180cm would be more appropriate but is still overstating the precision a bit. Using SI units without appropriate scientific notation and without respect to significant digits is kind of like watching a 3D movie with one eye closed.
I guess its just because saying "one-seventy-nine" rolls better off the tongue than "one point seventy nine" or "one point eight"
Particularly for folks with long spines, height can change significantly throughout the day.
I use a wheelchair on occasion - when I’m unwell and use my wheelchair I measure about 3cm taller than when I’m well and have been walking!
The cool thing about it being base 10 is that it really doesn't matter. It's instantly recognizable that 170cm is 1.7m. Easy, peasy. Now giving height in inches on the other hand... get the fuck outta here!
Japan does too, at least from all the manga etc I've read. Not in meters either, just cm.
In German, you'd probably say 1 Metre 85 (Ein Meter Fünfundachtzig), or 1 85 (Eins Fünfundachtzig) to be more brief. I'm relatively certain that it very much differs from language to language, and probably regionally within languages.
When the metric system was introduced in the UK, the schools taught decimeters, decameters and hectometers, not knowing that no one would ever bother with those.
Even if they are used rarely, they are still named.
So it is good to know they exist in order to explain the metric system.
I was still taught them back in the day in Belgium.
You can round it to 10's or 5's.
My licence says 183 cm. I'll usually say 180.
Edit: so the cartoon guy would probably just say 190cm
Mathless morons should be exiled to the middle of the saharan desert with a 5l bottle of water and a metric measure map to the nearest settlement
Jokes on you, the entire US military operates that way.
So that's why it took them so long to get out of Afghanistan!
Maybe thats where i got the idea
I just wish people would step up to a bigger scale when it's needed or to a smaller scale for the same reason. I hate seeing big massive boats measured in thousands upon thousands of centimeters instead of just using meters or feet, and it's annoying when people say their height in hundreds of millimeters.
Or when knife-blade thickness gets measured in hundredths of decimal inches or weird fractional measurements instead of just using millimeters since it's a smaller unit.
Yeah, I never heard anyone tell their height in centimetres. It's always like "I'm 1 metre 71" or so.
IDK about english-speaking places, but in Hebrew we'd say "meter 70". I never thought about whether this is strictly grammatical in Hebrew, but by the descriptive approach I guess it must be because it's commonly used.
Edit: but it doesn't really work when you want to write it as a number so you'd have to write either 1.70m or 170 cm (if you prefer 1m 70cm that's fine but it's two numbers)
In my language 100 is just tree letters so most of the people just say 170 insteand of meter 70 because its shorter
7.4 decainches
I hear americans measure tire thread depth in 32ths of an inch?? I mean it's nice that you're using powers of two but huh?
6'2"
Dividing by 12 isn't that difficult
It is if you are in an American public schools. I did not learn how to divide until I was in 3rd grade.
He wants to do the math twice!
I don't get why Americans and some other countries don't use metric system. Guys! x10, x100, x1000 or mm, m, cm, km is way easier than 🦶, ", ', mile, yard or whatever weapon you use to hurt yourself lol. I know scientists get that, but its easy for them to convert anyway. Imagine that 120 cent is 1$ haha
I'm familiar with both, but only use inch for screen size and for some specific pipes that are made in ". And yeah, the guy from the picture is 188 cm tall or 1,88 m. Don't think anyone use 10th of the mm for that and even if they did they would probably say 1879,6 mm
There's no real reason for it other than familiarity (and maybe some silly tribalism among certain people). I think if switching systems was as easy as flicking a light switch, most Americans would be fine with it. However, the mental effort it would take to unlearn the old system (especially for those in construction/carpentry and similar jobs) and the amount of tax money it would take to change signage just doesn't seem worth it. Personally I'd like to see us slowly update signage to include both measurements and teach only metric in school, but it's so far down the list of priorities that it's unlikely to happen any time soon.
I was mostly joking, but to use metric system you don't have to do much, just learn it. Honestly, I wasn't expecting I'll change the world aynway haha
Knowing both is useful and IMO it is the easiest for engineers and construction/production workers. For example here where I am, a lot of measurement tools have both units already (like measuring tape with meters and inches)
Imagine that 120 cent is 1$ haha
It's not that crazy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coins_of_the_pound_sterling#Pre-decimal_coinage
- £1 = 20 shillings (20s).
- 1 shilling = 12 pence (12d).
I'm big on metric but there's nothing weird or wrong about non-decimal subdivisions. People have intuition about whichever system they're used to. The true sin of so-called imperial units is that they're ambiguous: a mile can be a nautical mile or a survey mile or any of these other miles. Volume is totally broken: US and UK have incompatible definitions for fl oz, 'cup' has many different definitions and is easily confused for "however much liquid fits in your cup" so is basically meaningless, and 'gallon' has three values that are wildly different from each other. If you follow a recipe from the other side of the pond, you better make sure you're using the right foreign measuring cup.
A base 12 system is better then base10 objectively, because divisors are what make numbers useful and avoid decimals and fractions.
How much is that in bananas?
That is one of the many many ways someone gets shot in American schools.
Man it's been 2 days since I saw this and it fucking gets me every time. 🤣
Now every time I remember how tall I am, I also* remember this.
Don't disturbe the enemy when it is making a mistake.
All these comments, and I'm wondering who would ask someone about their height like this...it's pretty easy to estimate someone's height just by observation.
Eh, I've seen it as a smalltalk topic, to just want to know what the height is precisely, especially when someone is particularly tall.
Question, why do Europeans measure height in meters then centimeters(or just centimeters). It seems to make more sense to use decimeters then centimeters. Just one of those traditional things?
As someone else said, decimeters aren't actually used by anyone. In fact, other than centimetres and decibels, I can't think of any commonly-used unit that uses a prefix that isn't a power of 1000. (kilo, mega, milli, micro, etc. are all powers of 1000)
Beer in hectoliters, and for some reason Austrians measure foods in dekagrams.
As someone else said, decimeters aren’t actually used by anyone.
Tell that to the Austrians. You can easily spot Austrian recipes and sizes by the use of dL and dm. In most of the rest of Europe you'd be right. Also maybe only older Austrians use it more frequently.
Yeah, basically habit of using two digits precision whenever the meter is too big. Conveniently, the first two digits are centimeters. This comic is weird because our dude is using centimeters above 100 and adds millimeters and 10th milimeters to his length, must have been bald shaved at a precision doctor to get these numbers.
