Comment by atonse
1 day ago
I often make the argument about whether metric is "better" being split by "is it better on paper" vs "is it better in day to day life" - and most metric stuff breaks down in the latter, meaning, the non metric systems seem to be perfectly fine in day to day life, but almost always better on paper.
Like Celsius - sounds great on paper, not any better (and in some ways, worse) in day to day weather/temperature.
One of the few exceptions I find is metric paper sizes. It's such a beautiful way of designing the sizes that is not only perfect on paper (pun proudly intended), is also totally practical in real life.
> "is it better in day to day life"
Speak to a carpenter or construction worker from any country with the metric system. Measure anything by simple powers of ten and simple decimal shifts makes life so much easier. Quick, what is half of a yard-length beam less 12 1/16"?
But realistically - most things are standardized. Nominal sizes. 2x4's, a sheet of plywood or drywall is 4x8 feet, etc.
(In fact, the metric equivalents of construction units are all based on feet/inches converted to a round mm because construction sizes are much older than metric)
So yes maybe you're messing with lengths, etc. 100% true. But unless you're doing fine carpentry, it doesn't matter.
The other thing is that it's a system that divides by 2 multiple times - it's not totally random. But metric only divides by 10 and 5 cleanly. You can't do a "quarter" of anything. Which is fine... but I'm saying that both systems have their advantages and disadvantages.
Assuming you mean (3 ft / 2) - 12 1/16 inches, it's about 6 inches, which is probably the accuracy you need. But it's exactly 5 15/16 inches, which is also easy to do in your head. Carpenters do it all the time, and even a doctor can.
My head did 36" divided by 2, so 18", minus 12 1/16", so 5 and 15/16". That is harder than working with quarters or fifths of meters, but easier than thirds or sixths of meters.
I don't know which is better. Considering how nothing stops you from doing decimal inches or fractional meters, but people rarely do that, both ways seem fine.
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Not sure how Celsius is worse? Its unit is the same of Kelvin, just shifted by 273. 0C is freezing, 100C is boiling. Some people say Fahrenheit is more representative of how people feel, but that is very subjective and biased towards the West and Northern hemisphere.
Celsius in a lab (or in cooking) is perfectly fine.
But as a way to describe daily weather (and thermostats) it's woefully inadequate.
The sum total of "comfortable" temperatures in celsius has to be squeezed between maybe 17 to 24 - why? you never ever use anything above 40 except when talking about people that died from a heatwave.
It's based on the freezing and boiling point of water _at sea level_ which almost none of us ever encounter (whether it's sea level, or the boiling point of water).
Fahrenheit is a much more intuitive scale (again... to describe daily weather or human temperature) - 0 - 100 better models the temperatures we experience daily, and you can intuitively separate into 10s, the way you "feel"
For example...
100s - honey, please, let's move to a cooler place.
90s - uncomfortably hot
80s - hot in the sun, not too bad at night
70s - you'd probably want a light sweater at night
60s - light sweater all the time
50s - medium sweater
40s - sweater, maybe a coat
30s - coat
20s - sweater and coat
10s - why am i living in this region?
0s - honey, please, let's move to a warmer place.
The point is that there's enough resolution to describe the actual human experience with temperature.
For everything else, celsius is perfectly adequate, totally agree.
FYI, none of this has ever made any sense at all to somebody who didn’t grow up with Fahrenheit. Numbers don’t need to go roughly between 40 and 100, and then occasionally 212 and 450.
The difference between 20 C and 20.5 C is not generally noticeable. The difference between 20 and 25 really is.
You’ll just have to face the fact that you feel comfortable with a really weird system that nobody else can see the point of, but it’s what you’re comfortable with. That’s OK, you’re allowed.
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Celsius has plenty of resolution for this; in fact I would say Fahrenheit has too much. You can feel the change of one degree Celsius, you can’t really with Fahrenheit. To illustrate this, not only is your scale in tens, but I often only hear people quote the Fahrenheit temperature in tens. In Celsius we almost always give the whole number, because it makes a difference.
They also accidentally got MPH right for cars. Fastest highway is like 85. 100 is the fastest a normal car can go and also a reasonable point to arrest the driver.
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You can make pretty much the same chart for Celsius and it makes as much sense.
40 - scorching hot
35 - super hot
30 - sunny summer day
25 - nice warm weather
20 - nice breezy weather
15 - a little chilly
10 - bring a coat
5 - getting cold
0 - drivers be careful
-5 - is cold
-10 - seriously cold
Etc.
Body temperature also has a nice cutoff point of 37.0C before you start to worry.
> The sum total of "comfortable" temperatures in celsius has to be squeezed between maybe 17 to 24
30° is perfectly comfortable for me.
> biased towards the West and Northern hemisphere
The widest range of temperatures found in any country is the USA. In the continental US alone the temperatures easily exceed -50°C and 50°C in both directions (much colder if you include Alaska). The USA also has the largest temperature change ever recorded in a 24 hour period, at 57°C.
Merits of specific measurement systems aside, the USA is arguably the most representative single country on Earth when it comes to temperature and "how people feel". It has among the hottest, coldest, and most extreme temperature ranges ever recorded.
Yep, highest outdoor temperature ever recorded was in the US. Even if you live in Death Valley, F makes more sense than C.
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"Just shifted by 273"
To be clear, I don't have strong feelings. Obviously in a lot of science/engineering fields we use Celsius degrees a lot. But we also us Kelvin absolute scale a lot which would be ridiculous for day-to-day usage.
I am used to Fahrenheit but it is also a finer scale and a nice round number for boiling is largely irrelevant for the vast majority of purposes. Yes, knowing the freezing point of water can be important but memorizing one simple number probably isn't a huge stretch especially that the reality differs based on a number of factors. Arguably, knowing that 0 degrees F means fricking cold is sort of a higher latitudes bias but I'm not sure the degree to which Celsius simplifies.
The problem with "0F is fricking cold" is that so is 5F, and 10F, and even 15F to many people; and the difference between, say, -10F and +10F is pretty much none for practical purposes. Whereas knowing whether it was +1C or -1C during the night can have major impact on road safety.
With literally everything else about those two scales being a matter of preference and getting used to, this is the only objective difference with real world impact. Very tiny impact but still. Focusing on this one thing is the only way to answer the question of which is better with anything other than "whichever you're used to, it doesn't matter whatsoever". And if you focus on this one thing, then by the slightest of margins, Celsius is objectively better.
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> Its unit is the same of Kelvin, just shifted by 273
You mean shifted by 273.15 because Kelvin doesn't have tidy fixed points at the freezing and boiling point of water, unlike Celsius and Fahrenheit.
Celsius and Fahrenheit are both utilitarian systems. Kelvin is the scientific system. Arguments about the relative utility of C° and F° are subjective and neither is particularly optimal for science.
Celsius isn't granular enough. Many digital thermostats will even add decimal places if you switch to Celsius mode that aren't present in Fahrenheit.
Secondly, the highest temperature ever recorded outdoors was 56.7˚C. So no matter where you are, from that to 99 is wasted.
I have a kitchen thermometer for making caramel (can't remember exact number but ballpark is 200C). I occasionally use my oven at 250C. My wife fires her ceramics in a kiln at around 1000C. I don't feel like I'm "wasting" anything here.
> Celsius isn't granular enough.
This argument would be reasonable if we didn't have to cut inches into 16 or 32 parts to approach decent granularity. At least we use decimal for cutting Celsius up...
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Only Americans feel this way about Celsius. The only downside is that Celsius requires 3 digit precision to really accurately characterize what temperature a room feels. I would be willing to bet humans are woefully inadequate at knowing the temperature of the room they are in anyways
I put more details here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=49635310
I do concede the overwhelming majority of people that argue that one is better than the other (both ways) are basically just arguing "the thing I grew up with is better" - because when you probe further, there isn't really any supporting argument, just "I understand this system better because I grew up with it" but it's equally vacuous coming from people who grew up with Celsius.
I came to the US when I was 12, so I grew up with Celsius but didn't pay attention to the weather as a young child. But still, I've lived in both systems.
I dunno I’m in a room and guessed that the temperature was 72°F and sure enough it’s 72° in here.
As an American, I find Fahrenheit much better for ambient temperature and body temperature, but I hate seeing it for things like melting points of materials and the like. I'm always thrown off by statements like 800-degree pizza ovens, because once you get above 500°F it is out of the realm of everyday measurements, and I have trouble mentally separating the values for metals melting in °C and "gee whiz" temperatures in °F.
All scientific and engineering use should probably eschew the customary measurements, even in the news. For example, in aviation, they use °C now unless your airplane is very old. Unfortunately, in the US we still use inches of mercury for pressure, both knots and MPH but never km/h or m/s, etc.
If it makes you feel better, in Poland we still use millimeters of mercury.
Celsius is not really related to the metric system. It's just a temperature scale the entire world (minus the US) agreed to use.
The only connection off the top of my head is that mL of water increases by 1˚C if heated with 1 calorie. Which is annoying because 1 Calorie is 1000 calories.
Why do you think Celsius is worse in day to day life?
Because in Celsius, 0 lets you know the water outside will likely be frozen and 100 lets you know the water in your pot is likely boiling. This is utterly useless information.
It is nowhere near as useful day to day as knowing 0°F means a very specific saltwater brine mixture will likely be frozen, and 90°F is kind of as hot as your insides. Or 96. Or 98.6 as the third revision decided.
Also the 0 and 100 is at sea level.
If you actually measure a boiling pot (assuming you aren't at the beach), it will likely not be exactly 100 degrees, but less (or more, haven't had my coffee so I can't calculate).
So for most day to day stuff, it's equally arbitrary. And pretty much _nobody_ needs a thermometer to tell if something's boiling, you wait for a rolling boil. Or frozen, you wait until it looks like ice.
So again, great on paper, but in day to day use, not necessarily more useful than F.
I find F way more intuitive for weather. The larger scale helps. 100 is hot. 0 is quite cold. Boiling point is irrelevant. 32 freezing is the only thing that feels arbitrary.
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I find that increments of 1C are too small to be useful in daily life but increments of 5C are quite big. As a result, you can't really round degrees Celsius to a multiple of 5 whereas full precision integer temperatures are too precise. So for example 15C and 17C feel like different temperatures, but each 1C step from 15C to 16C to 17C is not really useful.
In contrast, it's very reasonable to round temperature to increments of 5 degrees Fahrenheit. So for example 58F and 60F are basically the same temperature as far as my perception is concerned.
It's literally does not matter in day to day life. In the end you get to X degrees is cold, Y degrees is perfect and Z degrees is hot regardless of C or F.
I grew up using C and now I'm using F, if I move to a country that uses C, I will switch again. Its meaningless.
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What are you talking about? The same can be said about 59F (15°C) and 60F (15.56°C)
"One fahrenheit increment doesn't feel like anything"
At least Celsius are grounded in reality, should I be worried about ice? Just check if temperature is below 0°C. But hey you may need to check if your solution of water, ice and ammonium chloride is frozen, so I just need to check if below 0F. That's probably something you do often right?
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I can sense 0.5C changes when I set my AC at home.
1990s LCD HVAC thermostats that didn’t go down to half degrees had better precision when set to °F vs °C.
There's also this famous comparison chart meme: https://www.reddit.com/r/slatestarcodex/comments/t0lnjt/fahr...
...making the point that Fahrenheit's 0-100 range is better suited to normal day to day measurements than 0-100 Celsius. The numbers that feel easiest to communicate with are scaled nicely relative to the range of temperatures you most often want to communicate about.
i assume most of it is a joke?
> It is more precise. Fahrenheit has more frequent degrees, allowing for greater resolution with analog thermometers.
this is really about the graduation and size of the thermometer? you can print a useful line pitch as you like, and have it represent what you want, where thats a 0.25C, 3F, 10c or whathaveyou.
everyday temperatures are pretty well centered around 0C, half the year above, the other half below, and the 10, 20, 30, and 40 increments feel quite similar to each other in severity of the season. +30 is damn hot and -30 is damn cold. +/-10 is all mildly warm or cold, with +/-20 really being where you do seasonal acitivites like swimming or skiing.
as far as western units go, C fits fantastically for the the traditional western culture with 4 idealized seasons. I could see F being better for places outside the idealized west - eg. the american south/sun belt, the PNW, southeast asia, south america, a lot of africa, etc where the seasons are different
I like how the comments are like "um acxshaully as a Canadian [citation needed] [you forgot </s>](xkcd/234234)"
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