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Tiles are window dressing and it doesn't what the sizes are. 2*4's and plywood are the underlying structure. If you were adding an addition where everything is new it's not an issue but if you're renovating there is no way around the need for standard measurements. Studs in the wall are going to be 16 on center and that's not going to change.
Unless you're going to tear down every structure in this country or accept a huge amount of waste product and increased costs to make it fit there will always be a need for the standard sizes we have now.
Well, they have plenty of old houses in the UK - my mother's flat was built in 1890 - and they seem to be able to manage with metric measures just fine.
The whole problem with the metric debate is that too many people are trying to find problems where they don't really exist.
I have no problem staying with the mish-mash of imperial and metric that we have now. But lets at least be honest when we debate the issue. Most people don't want metric simply because they don't want to change. Fair enough. But lets not invent obstacles where they don't exist to try to rationalize why we don't want to change.
Well, they have plenty of old houses in the UK - my mother's flat was built in 1890 - and they seem to be able to manage with metric measures just fine.
The only way they are doing that easily is they have standard measurements given as metric. It's still a standard measurement and now you have an odd metric sized piece of wood.
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The whole problem with the metric debate is that too many people are trying to find problems where they don't really exist.
I like the metric system but this is a huge problem, nearlyevery structure in this country is built using standard measurements. That is not going to change until they are gone. If you go to put new sheetrock up in your house you're going to need sheets that line up with the studs, there is no way around without a lot of extra work and waste material. the same thing applies for every other structural material in your house.
Still waiting for an answer from archaic imperial system lovers...
Why would they bother?
How many times have you measured 875 (or whatever) inches? How many times have you been interested enough to figure out 80lb in Oz?
It's a straw man indeed it's the perfect example of a straw man, its so strawy and manly even other straw men come up to it and compliment it on it's strawyness and manliness.
Metric isn't better because it's easier to divide it by a factor of 10, and Imperial isn't any worse because many times it can't. If you do not understand how to perform any division/multiplication other than factors of 10 you've got bigger issues than your measuring units.
By the same token you're using here's a perfect example of "why archaic imperial is better"...
Suppose you have 80lbs of flour, to bake a batch of bread it takes 2lb of flour, without a calculator how many batches of flour do you have?
How many times have you measured 875 (or whatever) inches? How many times have you been interested enough to figure out 80lb in Oz?
It's a straw man indeed it's the perfect example of a straw man, its so strawy and manly even other straw men come up to it and compliment it on it's strawyness and manliness.
Metric isn't better because it's easier to divide it by a factor of 10, and Imperial isn't any worse because many times it can't. If you do not understand how to perform any division/multiplication other than factors of 10 you've got bigger issues than your measuring units.
By the same token you're using here's a perfect example of "why archaic imperial is better"...
Suppose you have 80lbs of flour, to bake a batch of bread it takes 2lb of flour, without a calculator how many batches of flour do you have?
How many times have you measured 875 (or whatever) inches? How many times have you been interested enough to figure out 80lb in Oz?
It's a straw man indeed it's the perfect example of a straw man, its so strawy and manly even other straw men come up to it and compliment it on it's strawyness and manliness.
Metric isn't better because it's easier to divide it by a factor of 10, and Imperial isn't any worse because many times it can't. If you do not understand how to perform any division/multiplication other than factors of 10 you've got bigger issues than your measuring units.
By the same token you're using here's a perfect example of "why archaic imperial is better"...
Suppose you have 80lbs of flour, to bake a batch of bread it takes 2lb of flour, without a calculator how many batches of flour do you have?
What does it prove? Nothing.
So you are telling me that the entire world besides the U.S. and two smaller countries that uses the Metric system are silly and basically stupid for using it, while us Americans are smart?
Why do we have to be different? I want to have easy calculations.
So you are telling me that the entire world besides the U.S. and two smaller countries that uses the Metric system are silly and basically stupid for using it, while us Americans are smart?
If you can point to where I said that, I'd be much obliged.
No I'm saying it's irrelevant. Which is why I'd deriving much malign humor from this thread. However more seriously because it's irrelevant, why should we pay money to convert from one irrelevant arbitrary measurement system to another irrelevant arbitrary measurement system?
Both systems are arbitrary because we selected the measures before we comprehended enough of the nature of the world around us to be accurate, and because subsequently we adapted our definitions to match as close as possible those historical measures (i.e. we had the answer and worked backwards). It's no mistake that many of the modern definitions for SI units resolve to really strange numbers of wavelengths of light, or numbers of atoms or ratios of materials, it's because we wanted to retain close proximity to the original measure.
Both are irrelevant to most people because as long as you get what you expect you're happy. If you buy a 10' pole as long as it's 10' and generally pole shaped, you're happy, if you bought a 3 meter pole as long as it was 3 meters long (or near enough 10') and generally pole shaped you'd be happy. Same principle applies to pretty much everything we use measurements for in the real world. It doesn't matter that you buy gas in liters or gallons, because you're actually paying the same price and going the same distance on a tank of gas regardless of the measurement you put in there. This principle applies to both Europe and the US. The general consumer based metric is actually a variant metric of how much do I get for a Dollar or a Euro (be that gas, 10' poles, or anything else) or it's converse how many dollars/euro's does it cost for my (place measured object here).
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Originally Posted by OneLess
Why do we need to be the same?
Why do we have to be different?
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Originally Posted by OneLess
I want to have easy calculations.
That's fine then just convert the values to a number base so the calculation results in multiplier or divisor that is a factor of 10 (in that number base), do the multiplication/division in that number base, convert back to decimal and you're golden...
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