XKCD has put out this great summary of metric units. While the comic is great fun (I especially like all the shiny Firefly/Serenity references), it has regrettably set off a round of bashing the US for clinging to the English system while the rest of the presumably more enlightened world uses the Metric system.
While I agree that the metric system is superior, I find many of the arguments put forth for switching to be specious at best. The most popular of these is the all time poster-boy of why we should use the metric system, the loss of the Mars Climate Orbiter in 1999. In that case the Mars Climate Orbiter was lost because some of the telemetry data was delivered by an outside contractor in English but the orbiter software was expecting metric.
I’m sorry but this is a very unconvincing argument. First of all, just because metric would be better for use in a satellite guidance system is no reason that I have to buy salsa measured in grams (for the record the jar of Tostitos Salsa I just bought comes marked in both English and Metric, 24 oz and 680g respectively). In fact in college I did all my engineering work in Metric and then lived my non-academic life in English. It’s really not that big a deal.
Second, software errors caused by unit mismatch can happen even in a consistently all metric environment. For instance in the Mars Climate Probe case the results would have been just as catastrophic if data that was expected to be in Meters was delivered in Kilometers. One common software error that I have seen repeatedly over my career is using local time instead of GMT time.
Third, there is very little advantage in switching but it would be hugely expensive.
But here is my dirty secret: I love that the US uses the English system. Not because it’s better (it’s not), but because it represents a libertarian philosophy. Rather than the government forcing everyone to use one system of measure, the choice is left to the consumers. If they decide they want the metric system, they will force the manufacturers to use it. So far, when offered the choice, American consumers have collectively decided that we should keep the English system. I don’t see that changing any time soon.
BTW, I also wrote about the myths and misconceptions of the Metric system here.
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