I think you might have missed that I already stated that it's an irrational thing to complain about because units in nature are arbitrary, but given that no one uses these units for the topic at hand, why use them at all? Just for relatability?
> It may as well be in hectares or "multiples of some lake somewhere", it's a massive number.
We're saying the same thing but arguing for the opposite. Like I said, no one in a technical capacity uses these units seriously. So then if the number is so conceptually massively big and the units don't matter, why go through the extra forced effort of converting to imperial? Just use the units that the specifications come in and the numbers that the factories use?
The more you play with vast unit conversions like this, the more you risk losing information across sources/citations. What if I want to do my own research later on? It's more work if I'm searching for specific numbers on Google. We also know just how terrible Google Search results are getting nowadays, so...
> We all get it, Americans with their imperial units, ha ha.
I think this is an uncharitable interpretation of my comment. I'm not trying to make fun of Americans, I'm trying to understand what the extra efort is worth for?
The WSJ didn't write this article for you, it isn't an industry rag. This is like complaining that their scientific articles try to dumb it down for a layman's depth.
A football field or soccer field is a perfectly reasonable unit of measure when you're simply trying to convey "a lot" to someone.
I don't particularly agree with the parent comment, but you are being oddly aggressive over something that is a real problem - communicating things is hard and it's a useful topic to consider in a world that increasingly runs on text-based communication.
Pedantically, at least a standard US football field is an exact size (120yds long, 53 1/3 yds wide).
Soccer pitches? Not so much ... FIFA states the field of play for international matches should be 100-110m long and 64-75m wide (tolerances are relaxed to 90-120m long by 45-90m wide - which oddly means you could have a square pitch). If one would like an example of a comically undersized pitch, look to NYFC playing at Yankee stadium - they had to get a special exemption from MLS, IIRC.
Still useful, though, and I think a reasonable person with familiarity with either soccer or football would get a rough idea.
Please don't take this as criticism ; it's not meant to be. The mention of football and soccer fields being used as a measure of size in the same sentence sparked recollection of some not-otherwise-useful knowledge stuck in my brain.
I don't think anyone uses them as exact units of measure but rather to communicate a size in relatable terms. When you relate scale to something familiar it elicits connotations from an individual's experience that makes things easier to comprehend.
Most people have seen a football or soccer field and understand the approximate size.
If everyone uses a different unit then it may not appear to be a lot at all. Nobody is measuring office space in football fields so how am I supposed to know how a football field sized manufacturing plant compares to an office building?
In general conversation, or general news articles people don't need exact units of measure because they're not acting upon that information. You use an approximation like football fields because it elicits a connotation and can help people easily grasp the scale.
> Quit being dishonest. You're not trying to understand because it's really fucking easy to understand.
Again, being very disingenuous. I'm sorry that it's so offensive to you that I was reading the article in Japanese and found it very strange that imperial units were leaking across not only domain topics (semiconductors), but language itself. If you ask me, it's more obtrusive this way than the other way around. I thought it wouldn't be too much of an ask to use the original units that the entire industry uses
This touts a certain kind of agenda that Americans should be pandered to, and I think your aggressive tone reflects that.
I hope you're aware that a very well-supported Japanese edition of The Wall Street Journal exists, and its target audience is Japanese readers. It usually handles localization extremely well. I was reading the non-English article and saw it was using imperial units both in the text and graphs and I had to do a double take. This is the entire reason why I found it interesting.
> Let's clarify. You're sorry that I find your insults offensive?
> You basically said "the American units of measure are unprofessional and I can't take anyone seriously when they use them" and you wonder why that might be offensive?
> Are you reading it for laughs then? I don't understand.
I tried to make it clear that I was describing my own experiences and biases, and I admitted that the units (when taken alone, by themselves) are arbitrary, and so it's irrational to harbor this subconscious, yet you still seem fully set on being offended rather than taking my descriptions at face value.
I think in the future your conversations could go better if you put less effort into deconstructing people's ulterior motives.
> It's ok to not like the Imperial system, most Americans hate it too. And we're stuck with it until momentum can built to change that fact. But what you're exhibiting is elitism and snobbery.
You did more than anyone to perpetuate this flamewar. That's seriously not cool, regardless of how badly someone else's comments were or you feel they were.
Thanks for taking the time to call out obvious casual prejudice, that you did it so articulately and humanly for someone retreating further and further into the facile impression of a robot speaks volumes.
> If you ask the vast majority of Americans how many centimeters are in a foot, you'll get blank stares. If you ask them how long 30 centimeters are you'll get blank stares.
The conventions of dealing mainly in centimeters and meters when discussing dimensions of human scale items could use fixing.
A simple solution is to promulgate the use of the "metric hand" (or just "hand" for short). 1 hand = 1 decimeter = 10 centimeters; about the width of a human hand. The decimeter has the nice property that it's approximately 4 inches, so there are roughly 3 hands in a foot—similar conversion conversion factor as going from feet to yards. Nice! Error accumulates at only 1.6mm (exactly 1.6mm) per hand.
(Equestrian sports already has a "hand" unit. Conveniently, it's defined as 4 inches, and its use is pretty much confined to those circles. There's not much need to distinguish between the two, therefore, but if ever a need arises, we can clarify whether we're talking about "metric hands" or "horse hands".)
> If you really truly want an answer, it's relatablity.
> If you ask the vast majority of Americans how many centimeters are in a foot, you'll get blank stares. If you ask them how long 30 centimeters are you'll get blank stares. If you ask them how long a foot is they'll hold up their hands about a foot apart.
> Americans use imperial units because it's what they used daily, what they're familiar with, and what they know. It's really not that hard to understand.
So I should print out one for everyone in America and pull it out with every conversation to reference it?
If America is going to switch to metric it is going to require a concerted effort to influence everyone, not flash cards.
They need to gradually phase it in. Since road signs last ~7 years they should pass legislation stating all new road signs must have kph under mph by 2029. Legislation to say by 2036 they must have kph on top with mph minimized underneath. By 2045 all must just display kph. Everything else much have a similar phased approach. By 2050, no more imperial.
> It may as well be in hectares or "multiples of some lake somewhere", it's a massive number.
We're saying the same thing but arguing for the opposite. Like I said, no one in a technical capacity uses these units seriously. So then if the number is so conceptually massively big and the units don't matter, why go through the extra forced effort of converting to imperial? Just use the units that the specifications come in and the numbers that the factories use?
The more you play with vast unit conversions like this, the more you risk losing information across sources/citations. What if I want to do my own research later on? It's more work if I'm searching for specific numbers on Google. We also know just how terrible Google Search results are getting nowadays, so...
> We all get it, Americans with their imperial units, ha ha.
I think this is an uncharitable interpretation of my comment. I'm not trying to make fun of Americans, I'm trying to understand what the extra efort is worth for?