No, it is more likely. I explained why before. Here is it again.

In ANY UNIT, in a large data set over multiple scales, 1 will be the most frequently occuring digit (over 30% on average). That goes for any metric unit, and any English unit too.

But because metric units are RELATED by factors of 10, _they all have their 30% of leading ones simultaneously._ So you can't change units to get out of it. You're just stuck with it, and will always have mostly leading ones.

Because English units have non-decimal conversion factors, though, you can switch to another unit that isn't experiencing its glut of ones at the scale / dataset you're interested in. Every English unit still has the problem, but they don't all have it at the same time, you can switch out of it in some cases, which you can never ever do in metric.

It's true of course that these charts just happen to work out that way (though this was the first thing I thought to look up for an example), and I'm just using them to demonstrate why it's nice to avoid. But the point is, you can avoid it it English.

*but since they don't

Yeah these starting "ones" really are worth getting rid of even if it means crashing the ocassional multi million dollar spacecraft :D

And in dips rh for another engineering red herring.

Agree. Redhouse he's not making any such argument. In fact he's said repeatedly that engineering and science is best in Metric.

OK Semck you convinced me. Even so, English units still blow. I'll take the leading ones any day.

The whole "trailing 1" is such a nonsense story. I'm terribly sorry but it is. That's not the kind of thing people have trouble with. It's converting one thing to the other that causes headaches. Given how few engineers we already have with respect to the number of engineers we'd want in our society, I don't see why we should make their lives unnecessarily complicated and, for meso-scale engineering and day to day business, not adopt the same system. But hey, I don't care at all, because that's what we already do in Europe. I'm not saying Europe's the best. In most respects, with respect to the EU, I think it performs a lot worse. But yay for metric system all over society.

Hmm. Your argument seems to be that college kids might decide not to go into engineering, overwhelmed at the prospect of having to convert units for the odd real-world parameter.

I'm sorry. I just don't buy that we're losing the cream of the talent crop to this issue.

The problem with the metric system is that it's hard to convert to in your head. Take 7 fathoms, 6 cubits, 9 feet, 4 hands, 3 and 7/8ths inches and 72 hairsbreadths. I struggle to convert this into metric in my head, or even with a computer. So much for metrication. If anyone can help btw....

@semck,

I agree. It's the low-tier that will have this issue as one of many to struggle with. And it's not that they don't go into engineering, it's that you're making something that is hard a little and unnecessarily harder IMHO.

What coarseness of hair are we talking?

OK rh. Well, units are used for a great many things other than engineering. In my opinion, standard units should be selected to be maximally useful in the full range of tasks for which a society uses units, not specialized for a particular industry such as engineering. I know that can be hard to remember when one is (kind of) an engineer. But it's much easier for a particular firm to specialize when it sees the need.

The metric system is maximally useful in the sense that it requires less computation. I'm arguing that if you look at cutting conversion factors (that the imperial system is full of and that is largely voided by the also imperfect metric system) on the one hand and not having your numbers starting with the number 1 on the other hand, I believe you'll find that the former yields a greater advantage in day to day life than the latter. In fact, I never even considered the leading 1 thing. I'm sure you considered how annoying it is requiring a calculator if you want to go from finger-sized, to body-sized, to house-sized, to country-sized objects.

Also, the trailing one thing is not at all inconvenient. For example, to say that someone who is more than *exactly* 2 meters tall is actually a perfectly fine measure for calling someone a tall person. And I don't see the airplane thing either. I work over a range of distances. From home to work (less than ten but much more than one kilometer), from home to back home with family (more than a hundred but less than a thousand kilometers), from work to the place where I buy lunch, between a hundred meters and a kilometer.

Etc.

This trailing one thing, I don't see it.

It's true you didn't consider the leading-one thing; but what I suspect you would have considered (if you been much exposed to the English system) is the curious fact that it's better suited to the things you want to measure in it -- that the scales match up better, so to speak, with things you might actually want to measure. I am just helpfully putting that widely-reported fact in technical terms for you.

Converting can be a nuisance, but I findi the bigger nuisance to be not having a system of words to use that is aptly suited to the world I want to describe with them. People quite naturally fall into using the correct units, and they have a real sense for the things and for what they mean, because they so commonly use them in the numeric ranges where they also have intuition. The conversion thing is a mere flea-bite of annoyance from time to time.

Look at the state size chart I posted earlier, rh. The leading-one thing is just a proxy for the fact that the metric system is in non-ideal numeric ranges over too much of a data set. And by non-ideal, I mean ranges where comparisons are clumsier for humans to make/we don't have as much intuition.

It's basically the "use" size of your "conversion" issue -- in any given unit, you have to do too much math to use metric units helpfully.

Also, it's leading, not trailing. Get it right.

Ow I used leading several times before when I criticized your opinion you know damn well I got it right.

lol, I guess you did. You said trailing 3 times, leading 2. I really didn't notice the times you said it right. Sorry.

(I was having to do a mental conversion from trailing to leading. It was incredibly draining. It was as bad as using English units).

:D
Well played sir, alright.
semck, I don't see the problem with the "leading 1s" as you correctly call it in the slightest. What I do see a problem with is this: say you'll want to distribute 10% of Texas to national parks, expressed in a unit that is smaller than the mile that we use in Europe, such as the hectare. Also, take an imperial unit. Now I can do this ENTIRE CATEGORY of calculations without a calculator. Now, we're going to build houses on these patches of land in another imperial unit (feet or something, I don't know what it is you guys do). AGAIN, I can easily convert to meters. What I lose with leading 1s, I largely make up for with computational ease..!

I do absolutely see that it's more convenient to have most numbers somewhere between 1 and 10. What I *don't* see is how that could *possibly* be a more serious problem than the problem of not being able to do simple computations just by looking at the numbers!

But rh, I've got to believe that somewhere while this bill was being drafted, somebody would have access to a calculator! The bigger problem is that the metric units would obscure mental clarity about how much land was being talked about, *even after the calculation was known.* The units, because of scale mismatching, are just not as intuitive and easy to talk about and grasp. And if we're just doing back-of-the-envelope computations for discussion around the fire, well, then, rough conversion factors will do just fine. A square mile is about 250 hectares, for that level of precision. Multiply by 1000 and divide by 4. How bad is that?

Oh and also -- don't mess with Texas.

For you maybe, because you're used to imperial. I have no trouble thinking in terms of 13 kilometers, or 11 meters, or someone who's 1.65m tall. I can perfectly imagine these things because I'm perfectly used to these units.

And I won't mess with Texas. You guys have more than enough space though, whichever unit you'll want to express it in ;-)

No, it's not the issue of what I'm used to. As I've said before on this thread several times, I've noticed this even when I wasn't paying attention to units. (For example: I'll be reading a chart, and I'll look over at the two size columns, _without knowing which unit either of them is in_, and I'll start to notice that one is useful and the other is much less useful. When I look up at the top, a majority of the time the former is in English units). This is because of the 1 issue, not what I'm used to. It's because of the ease with which we convert and compare numbers in different ranges.

Nonsense.

PS
"A square mile is about 250 hectares, for that level of precision. Multiply by 1000 and divide by 4. How bad is that?"
I'll tell you how bad that is: You do one ADDITIONAL calculation and you LOST precision with respect to the metric system. I have one LESS calculation and KEEP all my precision.

Before you know it, you're crashing a satellite on Mars. Boom. Just like that. Nothing imperial about going some place and then destroying the equipment which was supposed to relay information about it. That is as anti-imperial as it gets semck. Admit it. Search your feelings, you know it ... to be true.

I had a dream last night that I'd crashed a satelite into Mars because i'd miscalculate the projectory and I woke up sweating about how I could pause my diplomacy games while I worked the problem.

However many times you try to make this about engineering, redhouse, that many times will I doubt your ability to read and comprehend my earlier posts.

Yes, it is one more calculation. As I say, a flea-bite nuisance for what you get -- units you can more easily grasp, compare, and relate to.

As for your "Nonsense" remark -- well, such is my experience. If you think I'm lying, then I can understand why you don't find my argument persuasive. But I'm not. And I've already explained the cause of the effect many times now. I suspect all you'll have to bring back is additional tired, bare contradiction and an irrelevant NASA jibe or two. Have at it.

Nonsense, and the before you know it, were meant as jokes.

I will translate these jokes to imperial units later during the day. They will suck EQUALLY hard, with no loss of precision.

But by my calculations the US should be either sleeping or having breakfast right now. What are you doing here? ;-)