Michiel van der Vlist - Björn Felten  writes:

> Hello Björn,
>
> On Sunday August 16 2020 09:01, you wrote to Wayne Harris:
>
>  BF>    Right. With 4% of the world population using a totally different
>  BF> system, incompatible with the universal standard, what could possibly
>  BF> go wrong? Especially with international projects.
>
> An airplane running out of fuel and crashing because the captain
> ordered 5000 kg of fuel and the ground crew delivered 5000 pounds?
>
> A Mars lander crashing because of a mix up of feet and metres?

Without all due respect, sir, are you serious?  If people might be
ordered 5000 kg and deliver 5000 pounds, they might just as well mistake
5000 for 50000 too.

We all use meters and centimeters and feet and inches and we're doing
fine and making a bunch of mistakes at the same time.  I know deep down
people do get confused with it all, but it's not like having the US
start using the metric system that's going to make people more
knowledgeable.

To a scientist, whether you use the metric system or the imperial system
it seems a small detail.  To the population, though, it would be a major
project to go for such a change and I don't actually see much benefit.

It would be much more interesting to properly teach people about units
in the first place.  Let me elaborate on this, if you we all in the mood
for such a thing.

There's this story about a school teacher that was going to teach his
kids about fractions.  This is really a story about the importance of
units and how fractions are much more abstract than most people seem to
understand.  So, watch out!

Most of his kids were seating in tables with three kids total, so
sometimes there were two girls in a table, sometimes one girl.  But
there was one larger table with six kids, at which there seated four
girls and two boys.

The teacher points to a table and says --- see, there are two girls out
of three kids at this table, and that's what we mean by two thirds, so
he drew the table at the black board and wrote ``2/3'' next to it.  He
then points to the larger table and says --- over here, we have four
girls and two boys and that's what we mean by four sixths.  ``And,
....'', the teacher would continue his lecture if he had not been
interrupted by the following deduction:

  -- Ah, I see!  If you take the kids seating at two of these smaller
     2/3-girl-tables and put them all together at this larger table, you
     end up with a table where 4/6 kids are girls, from which we may
     safely deduce that 2/3 + 2/3 = 4/6.  Right?!

That's a brilliant deduction of a child that's well-learning the lesson
that the teacher exposed because, after all, the teacher did not
properly show them that the unit in use is bloody important in matters
of fractions.

Now, I don't know what you'll make of this story.  Lol.  You might just
use it to claim how the US should most definitely switch to the metric
system.  Lol.  Do what you will.

   ``[It] shall be the whole of the law!''
    -- The Book of the Law, Aleister Crowley.

Knock yourself out!

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