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But .. but ... when you ask someone the date they usually just give you the day, assuming that you're not so divorced from temporal reality that you can't pinpoint the month for yourself. And in formal situations such as a legal document you'd have to say 'this third day of September in the year of our Lord 1784' because 'September, this third day of' etc. just doesn't make sense. And surely it's legal usage that sets the template for such things not the informal?
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"When is you birthday?" : "July 4th."
"When Mark's party? "November 12th"
Month-Day answers to questions in everyday conversation.
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Member 9082365 wrote: And surely it's legal usage that sets the template for such things not the informal?
I don't think so! I think this is an example of evolution in the same way that changing spellings and pronunciations are. Nobody sat down and thought "Hmm -= what format should we use for dates?"
If they had we'd have been using a decimal calendar !
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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Well obviously somebody did sit down and think what format should the USA use for dates at some point or there wouldn't be agreement on the standard form used in business etc. (especially so as the format is different to the one that European settlers would have brought with them). It may be lost to us now but somewhere at some time there was a declaration made enshrining the 'new' format.
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I don't think so I think it's a 'defacto' standard.
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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Member 9082365 wrote: Bewildering!
Yeah, damn foreigners. 
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Look at SI Units: the metric system makes more sense simply because things equate to one another properly, and everything matches up. Imperial units just don't work that way: when you're trying to do anything with mechanical engineering involving equations, the calculations fail because the results are numbers which don't match the measurements they're supposed to be expressed in.
When American engineers want to build complex systems, they have to measure everything in imperial units, convert to SI units, do the work, then convert everything back to imperial units again in order to build whatever it is they're going to build. I choose to believe that this is why American car engines need four litres of displacement to produce less power than European or Japanese engines half the size can generate.
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I find it very difficult to believe that that's what any engineer does in reality but then this is the weirdest pro point I've ever come across. The equations that were created using SI units don't work with Imperial measurements? Gee, how did they ever do science before SI units then. Oh ... right ... they used equations that were created using Imperial units. The fundamental physical relationships don't change because you change the units that you measure values in, and in most cases there isn't even any need to modify the equation; s = d/t and F = ma whether you measure in metres, feet or cubits, kilograms, pounds or (idealised) chihuahuas!
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Wrong. There's a concept of coherence in systems of measurement: as described here[^].
Before this, doing science was significantly harder. The imperial system is NOT a coherent system of measurement, and thus calculations don't work. So, as I said before, you have to convert everything into SI units, do the calculation and then convert it all back again afterwards, otherwise you're forever trying to figure out how many of each unit of whatever measurement you started with end up figuring into whatever units you want to end up with.
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No. The arithmetic was more difficult. The science was completely unaffected. Almost all the significant engineering formulae were discovered before the metric system was even a glint in someone's eye and more than a few even predate the Imperial system. Ultimately the mathematics of science is always shoehorned into the measurement system of the day which is always arbitrary. There is no such thing as a coherent measurement system whatever way you cut it. There is no more logic to making your measuring stick the length of a fraction of the Earth's circumference (which in itself is an idealised length) than the average length of a male adult's foot. Simply because you have a name for a derived unit such as the newton doesn't change the fact that it is a derived (and arbitrary!) unit. There is no more coherence to the concept it disguises, it is a measure of mass multiplied by acceleration. 1N = 1m/s^2 is no more nor less consistent and coherent than 1 Tortoise Pull = 0.0013 dog tails per eyeblink ^2. The only difference is the speed of calculation (measured in camel heartbeats, obviously)!
Anyone who thinks that SI units are any less arbitrary than any other measuring sytem or fit more closely the natural spans of the Universe and the laws of physics they clearly haven't taken a look at the definition of those units recently (the second is a doozie!). The SI system is a convenience for scientists. It no more reflects the real world and how it's put together than the scribblings of a madman!
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I think you've just made my point for me with the phrases "the arithmetic was more difficult" and "The SI system is a convenience for scientists." Look at how SI units interlock, and how you can perform one calculation after another, from unit to unit, and it all maintains coherence. The Imperial system can't do that.
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Yes, it can, and did so very successfully for centuries. It would simply need updating with a few additional units to cope perfectly adequately with modern scientific calculations. There are, indeed, many international conventions which still use Imperial such as feet for aircraft heights, knots for boat speeds, and fathoms for water depth. I certainly don't expect the death of horsepower any time soon. And as someone else pointed out backing the metric system has proved to be a complete misstep with the arrival of computers as base 10 is the absolute worst for computer calculations with just two factors (2 and 5) making it all but impossible to express part units accurately in binary code. In the digital age decimal units are the dinosaurs.
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Don't know what type of engineering you are referring to but I work in Structural Engineering in the US and nothing gets converted to SI and back. That said, I would much prefer using the metric system.
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This would be mechanical engineering for things like cars, planes, etc. If you start doing fuel/mass/acceleration/... calculations, you'll be wanting SI units for sure.
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Why do Americans call it the 'Fourth of July' and write 07/04/2015?
So much simpler if we all used the ISO 2015-07-04.
I work with financial data that often can't be directly copied and pasted from web sites and PDF documents into other programs. I thought that was going to be fixed in the Windows 3.1 upgrade.
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As far as date is concerned, I prefer the "July 22, 2015" format. There is no room for ambiguity.
However, when it comes to Imperial v. Metric. I am strictly in the Metric for science, Imperial for every day use camp. For instance, I have an intuition for how far a mile is, or how much a 50lb bag of sand weighs, but I have no clue how far a kilometer is or how much a 50kg bag of sand might weigh. Yes, I know what the conversion factors are, but I have to think about it, then convert to Imperial, just so I can be in the right ballpark.
You could say, "Oh, well to Hell with current adults, we should do it for the children." But that creates a problem, because then you have two generations, who are in close proximity (parent/child relationships), using two different systems, and if the Common Core Math standards have taught us anything, it's that parents get really pissed when they're too stubborn and/or stupid to learn how to do their children's math homework.
The United States invariably does the right thing, after having exhausted every other alternative. -Winston Churchill
America is the only country that went from barbarism to decadence without civilization in between. -Oscar Wilde
Wow, even the French showed a little more spine than that before they got their sh*t pushed in.[^] -Colin Mullikin
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it's a narrowing thing.
It is (in principal) better to start with the biggest entity and narrow it down, than to start with an arbitrary portion.
Like with addresses (which are almost universally written in exactly the opposite way)
England > West Midlands > Sutton Coldfield > Four Oaks > Kenilworth Close > 2
2015 > July > 22nd
The only reason for using July 22nd, 1988 would be if generally the dates you are looking at are for the same year, and so the year portion is of less import.
So it depends on the use -case
PooperPig - Coming Soon
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Colin Mullikin wrote: For instance, I have an intuition for how far a mile is, or how much a 50lb bag of sand weighs, but I have no clue how far a kilometer is or how much a 50kg bag of sand might weigh.
Only because you've been brought up using the Imperial scale. I was born decades after India went metric and I have no idea how "long" a mile is or how much 5 lb "weighs".
Cheers,
विक्रम
"We have already been through this, I am not going to repeat myself." - fat_boy, in a global warming thread 
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Neither imperial nor metrics system makes sense. Check the very basic physics for this
modified 19-Jan-21 21:04pm.
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Please elaborate - I don't get your point. 
How do we preserve the wisdom men will need,
when their violent passions are spent?
- The Lost Horizon
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Americans are adopting the metric system... inch by inch! 
Contrary to popular belief, nobody owes you anything.
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Very funny! 
How do we preserve the wisdom men will need,
when their violent passions are spent?
- The Lost Horizon
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Now I prefer YYYYMMDD because it's great for easy sorting of things, even as text.
But as for the metric system being better? Nonsense. The US system is far more savvy with the modern way of doing things.
Start with an OUNCE.
2^2 Ounces is a Gil
2^3 Ounces is a Cup
2^4 Ounces is a Pint
2^5 Ounces is a Quart
2^7 Ounces is a Gallon.
Quarts can also, by powers of 2, be expanded to bushels and pecks.
So - obviously - the US system of measurements is perfect for the computer age. Clean, efficient, and fast (one can even use shift operators - try that with metric). No roundoff errors. No approximations.
PERFECTION
| "The difference between genius and stupidity is that genius has its limits." - Albert Einstein | | "As far as we know, our computer has never had an undetected error." - Weisert | | "If you are searching for perfection in others, then you seek disappointment. If you are seek perfection in yourself, then you will find failure." - Balboos HaGadol Mar 2010 |
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Grew up with the imperial system, in grade 7 or so when metric was introduced, so I've used both.
For dates? I write out the date, as in July 22, 2015 - no ambiguity. This is probably the format that gave rise to mm/dd/yy.
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