Mathless morons should be exiled to the middle of the saharan desert with a 5l bottle of water and a metric measure map to the nearest settlement
Jokes on you, the entire US military operates that way.
Maybe thats where i got the idea
So that’s why it took them so long to get out of Afghanistan!
Man it’s been 2 days since I saw this and it fucking gets me every time. 🤣
Now every time I remember how tall I am, I also* remember this.
Question, why do Europeans measure height in meters then centimeters(or just centimeters). It seems to make more sense to use decimeters then centimeters. Just one of those traditional things?
I’m trying to think of anything measured in decimeters.
M / cm It’s such a large difference in length you’d think decimeters would make sense.
You just shuffle zeroes
Yeah, basically habit of using two digits precision whenever the meter is too big. Conveniently, the first two digits are centimeters. This comic is weird because our dude is using centimeters above 100 and adds millimeters and 10th milimeters to his length, must have been bald shaved at a precision doctor to get these numbers.
As someone else said, decimeters aren’t actually used by anyone. In fact, other than centimetres and decibels, I can’t think of any commonly-used unit that uses a prefix that isn’t a power of 1000. (kilo, mega, milli, micro, etc. are all powers of 1000)
Hecto-. Hectare.
Hadn’t heard of that - neither the unit nor the prefix. Turns out the prefix is actually hecto meaning 100, and are isn’t a commonly used unit. Thanks for that!
Used in agriculture. Are sometimes also called hundred/sotka. There is also deca- prefix.
We use it in Canada for land size
Buying a house/zoning will have you come across it
Here’s my favorite German boomer humor, because it’s just so crude:
Verbatim translated, it says: Love fades, hectare stays.
Basically, it’s saying you should marry someone not for love, but rather for how many hectare of farmland they have, because in a long marriage, you’ll supposedly benefit more from the latter.
Beer in hectoliters, and for some reason Austrians measure foods in dekagrams.
That is one of the many many ways someone gets shot in American schools.
6’2"
Dividing by 12 isn’t that difficult
It is if you are in an American public schools. I did not learn how to divide until I was in 3rd grade.
How much is that in bananas?
I just wish people would step up to a bigger scale when it’s needed or to a smaller scale for the same reason. I hate seeing big massive boats measured in thousands upon thousands of centimeters instead of just using meters or feet, and it’s annoying when people say their height in hundreds of millimeters.
Or when knife-blade thickness gets measured in hundredths of decimal inches or weird fractional measurements instead of just using millimeters since it’s a smaller unit.
7.4 decainches
Yeah, I never heard anyone tell their height in centimetres. It’s always like “I’m 1 metre 71” or so.
IDK about english-speaking places, but in Hebrew we’d say “meter 70”. I never thought about whether this is strictly grammatical in Hebrew, but by the descriptive approach I guess it must be because it’s commonly used.
Edit: but it doesn’t really work when you want to write it as a number so you’d have to write either 1.70m or 170 cm (if you prefer 1m 70cm that’s fine but it’s two numbers)
I hear americans measure tire thread depth in 32ths of an inch?? I mean it’s nice that you’re using powers of two but huh?
Don’t disturbe the enemy when it is making a mistake.
Do Europeans really give their height in cm? You’d think they short hand it like to like 1.7m or whatever since height is one of those things that doesn’t really need to be exact and will change by a cm or so based on the kind of shoes you are wearing, or wearing shoes at all.
Not europe but yes, we do it in cm. Never heard people rounding up or down to the tenth though, so 164cm is 164cm, not 160cm.
Dick length is the only thing you can round up to the tens.
I guess its just because saying “one-seventy-nine” rolls better off the tongue than “one point seventy nine” or “one point eight”
In my native language we say the equivalent of ‘one and eighty-five’ to refer to 185 cm of height, so basically we give it in meters.
176cm would be given as “eins-sechsundsiebzig” in German, literally translating to one six and seventy (yeah it’s backwards), which works exactly like currency.
Do North Americans really give their weight in lb? You’d think they’d short hand it like to like 15 stone or whatever since weight is one of those things that doesn’t really need to be exact and will change by a lb or so based on the time of day and what you’ve eaten.
A better example would be if europeans really gave their weight in grams. I don’t think they do, they use kilo’s cause they don’t really need the precision of a gram for something like that.
because grams are small, but 174cm makes more sense than 1.7m
Agreed, since 1.65 and 1.74 both round to 1.7m, but 9cm is a pretty significant height difference.
No, we give our weight in pounds instead of ounces because weight is one of those things that doesn’t really need to be exact and will change by a couple dozen ounces or so based on the time of day and what you’ve eaten.
No, see, here ounces compare to millimetres. If height and weight fluctuate over centimetres and pounds, and they do, lesser units should be disregarded, right?
Stone isn’t a measurement in America, it’s inorganic material. The next-heighest commonly known weight is a ton, or 2000 lbs. Not very helpful.
When using feet and inches, its fine to use precision of 1 inch as it’s much smaller unit than 0.1 m.
If one says that they are 5’11" (180.34 cm), they can be 5’10.5" (179.07 cm) to 5’11.5" (181.61 cm) tall. That’s 1.4% variance.
If using meters with one decimal place, and say they are 1.8 m (5’10.9"), they can be 175 cm (5’8.9") to 185 cm (6’0.8") tall. That’s 5.6% variance.
Thus it’s not really viable to use only one decimal place when using metres as unit, so in many languages it’s easier to just say the length in centimeters compared to use two deeimal places.
In German, you’d probably say 1 Metre 85 (Ein Meter Fünfundachtzig), or 1 85 (Eins Fünfundachtzig) to be more brief. I’m relatively certain that it very much differs from language to language, and probably regionally within languages.
When the metric system was introduced in the UK, the schools taught decimeters, decameters and hectometers, not knowing that no one would ever bother with those.
Even if they are used rarely, they are still named.
So it is good to know they exist in order to explain the metric system.
I was still taught them back in the day in Belgium.
You can round it to 10’s or 5’s.
My licence says 183 cm. I’ll usually say 180.
Edit: so the cartoon guy would probably just say 190cm
Do Europeans really give their height in cm?
Yes.
continental europeans who know their height in feet must number in the hundreds! (my dad and i happen to be two because of Karl May reasons, but i doubt anyone else bothers…)
In France it’s generally in meters with two decimals, so basically the same as giving it in cm
Not European, but from a country that also uses the metric system. We give out our height in meters, as you said. Saying it in cm would be okey for medical reasons I suppose. Also there isn’t much difference in what unit you use, you just have to multiply/divide by 100, which is easily done in your head
Particularly for folks with long spines, height can change significantly throughout the day.
I use a wheelchair on occasion - when I’m unwell and use my wheelchair I measure about 3cm taller than when I’m well and have been walking!
Germans do go with meters when talking about their height but they’ll give you two decimal places.
I just say “one sixty five”, and so do most people in the Netherlands (most use different numbers though)
Same in Sweden.
Germany too
Bayern too
Bremerhaven does this as well
Yes where I live, we use cm usually. Also height is almost always measured without shoes
Unless you happen to be 2 meters tall, yes, you would give your height in cm. You might round it, but you’d never say you’re 1.8m tall.
Never? Why never?
Never ask why never.
Not when it comes to height measurement.
…Not when it comes to height measurement.
Lol, I guess I touched a nerve somehow, idk
Well, where I live, 1,85 m is less than average height, 1,90 m is more than average. It’s also a noticable difference, especially if you’re in the same height range.
That doesn’t answer my question at all, but thanks for your input!
The answer is if you round up to 1 digit, these heights are the same. So we give height in cm’s, because otherwise it’s not a usefull metric.
Except numerous people in this thread say they and people they know give their height in meters. So I guess it’s not really never then, huh? Just saying, try not to be so absolute about something so inabsolute.
If they would really give their height in meters, they would almost all be 2 meters except for the very short people.
Where I’m from, some people will still use feet/inches only for heights of human beings (weird, I know), but the most common response is in cm. For instance, if you asked me how tall I am I’d say 173cm, but I would say it like “I’m about a hundred and seventy-three” or “one-seven-three” - you don’t really have to say the units. Much the same as you’d say “I’m five foot seven” and you don’t need to specify “inches”.
10cm is 4inches, you’re not gonna round that much
Japan does too, at least from all the manga etc I’ve read. Not in meters either, just cm.
You always do it in cm wherever I’ve been. It’s either directly in cm, as in 172 cm or phrased in meters, as in 1.72 m. You cab say you’re around 170 cm tall or around 1.7 m tall, but the ‘default precision level’ is 1 cm
How did the first guy manage to measure his height to within 100 microns?
He’s European
Really accurate tape measure.
To be fair, mm scale lines are a thing and its pretty standard to estimate the last digit between lines on a measurement.
You’d still need demarcation down to .1 mm. Your eyes are going to struggle to guess which line you’re supposed to with, much less estimate last, unmarried 0.01 mm. 100 μm is about the width of a hair. 10 μ, well, good luck.
Regardless, such a precise measurement is meaningless when it comes to height, because there’s a lot of uncontrolled variables that will change you height for any given measurement.
Lasers and shit
woah
If you can stand very still I could do it here at work.
He used an inch tape measure and converted the height to cm I guess.
Making me divide by 12: that’s a paddlin’.
> console.log(`${Math.trunc(74/12)}' ${74 % 12}"`) 6' 2"I never could understand why they made us learn multiplication tables up to twelve. This is why, isn’t it?
We only went up to ten in germany, so yea probably.
Also my god those things are pointless.
Now if only we used a duodecimal number system. Then I could divide by 2, 3, 4, and 6 while staying within the integers for as long as possible. And someone who is 6’ 2" would just be 6212"
He wants to do the math twice!
All these comments, and I’m wondering who would ask someone about their height like this…it’s pretty easy to estimate someone’s height just by observation.
Eh, I’ve seen it as a smalltalk topic, to just want to know what the height is precisely, especially when someone is particularly tall.
About 27 Big Macs.
Wait I’ve checked this, a Big Mac is 3,5 inches in height. That’s 94,5 inches not 74.
Seriously, I’m an European and don’t know what I am talking about. Inches, Feet, Legs, Elbows… Lol only in america.
Historians will get the Elbow joke.
Google said a Big Mac was 2.75” in height, 3.75” in diameter. I then had to convert that to civilised units.
No joke, I used our European websearch qwant and found a link which says 3.5.
We talking promotional photo Big Mac or reality Big Mac?
Whatever as long as it’s easily convertible to a royale with cheese.
And did you sit on the bag on the way home?
Use either School buses, or Football fields pls.
Or fridges or rocks?
Otherwise known as 1 trump of breakfast burgers
I don’t get why Americans and some other countries don’t use metric system. Guys! x10, x100, x1000 or mm, m, cm, km is way easier than 🦶, ", ', mile, yard or whatever weapon you use to hurt yourself lol. I know scientists get that, but its easy for them to convert anyway. Imagine that 120 cent is 1$ haha
I’m familiar with both, but only use inch for screen size and for some specific pipes that are made in ". And yeah, the guy from the picture is 188 cm tall or 1,88 m. Don’t think anyone use 10th of the mm for that and even if they did they would probably say 1879,6 mm
A base 12 system is better then base10 objectively, because divisors are what make numbers useful and avoid decimals and fractions.
There’s no real reason for it other than familiarity (and maybe some silly tribalism among certain people). I think if switching systems was as easy as flicking a light switch, most Americans would be fine with it. However, the mental effort it would take to unlearn the old system (especially for those in construction/carpentry and similar jobs) and the amount of tax money it would take to change signage just doesn’t seem worth it. Personally I’d like to see us slowly update signage to include both measurements and teach only metric in school, but it’s so far down the list of priorities that it’s unlikely to happen any time soon.
