"metric ton" vs "short ton" is a little long but precise. Lately I've been thinking about the economics of plastic materials which are made from monomers which cost about 50 cents per pound or, as it turns out, $1000 per short ton. It is all approximate (prices go up and down) and might as well be per metric ton.
100 Farenheit, a very hot day, is 35 on this scale, but 37C on the real scale. 32F, the freezing point, is 1 on this scale but 0C for real. -10F, freaking cold, is -20 on this scale and -23C for real. For human temperatures the diff is negligible versus the real conversion. Obviously that freezing point is a big problem for real science, but who does real science with Fahrenheit anyhow, even in the US?
Still an ugly conversion, certainly, but you don't need the "2" in the 32 or the 9/5s ratio to get a good-enough-for-the-weather result.
(Likewise in reverse; multiply by two, add 30. Order matters, of course.)
How do you go through life without once deciding to learn the rough conversion between kgs and pounds (just double it, 1kg~=2lbs) or miles and kms (~1.5x it, 1mi~=1.5km) and so on?
Do you consume american media and just shrug every time you see a number and go "oops there's no way I can understand this now" unless you use Google?
Miles to km, yes. As another European, I know that because it's relevant to understand when they talk about speed limits, top speeds of cars, etc.
Pounds to kg... If it's written media, I just paste it to Google and get the conversion. If it's movies or shows, honestly I don't think I have found an instance while it actually matters at all. If a movie character says "Oh, no, I've gained 10 pounds in a month, I need to go on a diet" you know that they're sad because that's a non-negligible amount of weight, and knowing how much it exactly is doesn't affect understanding of the movie at all.
It's a similar situation to old novels talking about money... When you read a novel from 200 years ago talking about dollars, pounds or whatever, do you look at the historic inflation rate to check today's equivalence? You might, if you're a perfectionist, but the truth is that you can perfectly understand such novels without knowing that just by the context in which they mention money.
Historic inflation numbers are constantly changing depending on the year, pounds to kg is just one number.
2.2 is good enough for most practical purposes, even 1 kg = 1 lbs isn’t that bad and it’s easier to calculate.
It’s like not knowing how many months are in a year…. I mean you don’t need to remember, but people will look at you funny if you’re constantly looking it up.
Pounds is just one mostly-American unit. Add to that miles, feet, inches, ounces, cups, pints, quarts, gallons, barrels, acres, bushels and Fahrenheit, each of which might be relevant at most once a year, even for someone who watches a lot of American media.
It's about as useful as knowing how many sickles in a galleon, or knuts in a sickle — 1 point gained in the trivia quiz!
No-one in Europe will "look at you funny" if you don't know the conversion, except maybe if you live in Britain and it's miles, feet, inches or pints.
Mostly-American or historical European. The Count of Monte Cristo isn't that old yet it was written long before France went metric. Critically measurements are frequently meaningful in works of fiction. Back to the Future's 88 miles per hour would mean something very different if it was the equivalent of 40 kph or 400 kph, but nobody is looking it up while watching.
Sickles in a galleon shows up in one franchise, inches shows up in millions.
Months in a year is very frequently relevant, though. What I'm trying to say is that pounds in a kilo is not something most Europeans know (or remember) because it's not relevant for us. The example with historic dollars was just to illustrate that you typically don't really need to understand measurements in a movie or show to understand the narrative.
Right now I know pounds in a kilo because we're talking about it, but next time I encounter pounds in a context where the value is actually relevant might be years from now, and I'll probably have forgotten by then. Mentions in American media (which was what my parent poster was referring to) aren't enough to prime the memory and keep it fresh because they aren't relevant. If I hear in a show "I've gained 10 pounds", my mind just goes "Oh, they're unhappy because they gained some weight", I don't even stop to think how much a pound was.
It just seems strange to me that you realize you will regularly encounter something and then just not know it is strange to me.
Knowing common constants like the square root of 2 is 1.414, square root of 3 is 1.732, e is 2.718, etc isn't about the difficulty in looking them up it's about not needing to derail your thoughts by looking them up.
There is more to know in life than I will have time to learn. I memorize things I need often, or things I don't need often but in an emergency I will need to know them instantly - everything else I look up on need. It gives me more time to work on the things that are important to me. Unless your goal is to win a trivia contest you shouldn't memorize everything. (nothing wrong with winning a trivia contest if that is your goal, but only a few people can do it across all contests). Every one of your examples are things that I'd look up if I need to - in every context where I'd need them I'd already be using a calculator that has those built in.
Everybody should learn CPR, hopefully taking a day every year for the class turns out to be a waste of time at the end of your life but I still encourage everybody to do it. Some people need to know what e is - but it turns out I haven't needed that since I got out of school (learning to use e was in general good for learning rigorous thinking, but no need to memorize e as that value was someplace in my notes when I needed it). There are obscure things I use all the time I have memorized - but they are specific to my job or hobbies.
Looking stuff up isn’t free, which means it both costs time and frequently doesn’t happen.
Dismissing stuff as trivia doesn’t make that fundamental tradeoff go away. Do you need to know what 7 x 8 is, or the leader of China? No, but the cost of learning commonly used facts is far less than the non existent benefits of ignorance.
The key is commonly used. I don't think I have ever needed the square root of 3 in a context where I wasn't using a calculator anyway, so memorizing it would have been far more effort than looking it up (since any calculator can look this up instantly). Does it matter who the leader of China is - for some people it does, for other it is trivia not worth the bother of looking up. Back when I was getting my degree 7x8 was important to know (even if a calculator was allowed doing the math mentally was a trick I learned - most college calculus problems are selected to have easy math so if the math is hard I probably need to back up a step and fix my mistake - this trick didn't apply to other classes though), now it is mostly useful in context of proving to my 4th grader that I can do her level of math (7x8 might come up in real life, but only in contexts of a much harder problem so I'd be using a calculator anyway)
For me, the identity of the leader of China is genuinely as commonly used a fact as the lb-kg conversion rate, or that the circumference of the earth is almost exactly 4/30ths of a light-second.
Pounds is definitely not something I "regularly encounter" -- at least in the sense that I need to know more than that it is more than 100g and less than 900g. It just doesn't come up.
Perhaps different European countries are different here..
I think you are overestimating the relevance of minor bits of American (or historic) culture.
We can easily work out from the context what 60lb means. The precise figure is less relevant than the rest of the scene anyway — is a soldier carrying this backpack? An injured child?
All kinds of knowledge are relevant when reading a book. Is the backpack to be carried from Warsaw to Prague? Maybe I have a greater understanding of what that entails than you, even though I'm less sure about the 60lb.
> overestimating the relevance of minor bits of American (or historic) culture.
That’s a judgement you can’t make because by your own admission you’re unaware of the subtleties involved.
That’s the core issue. It’s not that you can’t know what’s happening it’s that you’re assuming you do know what’s happening even when you’re missing significant elements and then in a fit of circular reasoning assuming because you don’t know it must not be important.
Clues embedded in a murder mystery, signs that someone was cheating, implications of fraud, etc etc all depend on concrete details you simply gloss over.
Ignorance simply is a net loss no matter the subject. Token for example uses both furlong and league as a means of setting the settings tone, but also to convey information.
I did actually do this the other day, to get some idea of how much Scrooge is offering to pay the boy in the street to go and buy the turkey for him at the end of A Christmas Carol.
So how much was it? It would take time some time to look that up (find the story, find that part of the story...) when you know it anyway and can thus allow me to be lazy.
Well after reading this thread I will remember 2:1 forever...
Really is is just a measurement of how often you encounter facts. What you encounter often you cache and remember. Trivia you never use you don't.
As a 41 year old Norwegian, I have not encountered pounds often enough in my life to remember this fact.
It's not like I have ever used Google to convert either. It just isn't relevant. It is like..what is the currency of Malaysia? I really have no clue. Pounds is just something I almost never encounter.
Closest real use for pounds I can remember having I think was in "pound per square inch" pressure vs Newtons; but in that conversion there is so much else.
(Yes, before this thread I did have a vague sense. I would have said a pound was more than 200g and less than 800g I think.)
I agree, I tend to come out like this. Working on it. I do think it's a huge time saver for your whole life after to remember these 2 numbers. I use this information dozens of times per day.
It took me until early 30s to get bored enough to learn lb-kg conversion factor, despite also being the kind of nerd that memorised π to 11 decimal places (and who now has a greek keyboard on the phone); I managed to go this long just fine as nothing important is ever conveyed in this unit, only people telling me how much they weigh, it's never mattered.
And that's despite being British, so it's conventionally used by normal people, and (when I was a kid) a common unit of measure for produce and recipes.
Well I do I know that pounds are same order of magnitude as kg, miles same order of magnitude as km, and so on.
That is really enough for most reading. As another commenter said, you can read novels from the 70s involving dollars just fine without doing inflation adjustment to present value.
> Metric intervention Script Summary: Converting that old French system the Brits are still using to the metric standard of science. ~ foot, inch (00',00",00'00,00'00"), yard, mile, stone, Pound-mass/Lbs., Gallon ~ It will totally convert something heretical like: 1'23 1/4" x 2'12 5/8" into something ellegant and civilized like 89.535 cm x 93.0275 cm
Tons would be nice though.