White House response to the petition requesting a switch to metric

https://petitions.whitehouse.gov/response/supporting-american-choices-measurement?utm_source=wethepeople&utm_medium=response&utm_campaign=metric

by ColinWright • 13 years ago

44 77 13 years ago

petitions.whitehouse.gov

jmathai2• 13 years ago

Outsourcing this to the population means we'll never join the rest of the world and exclusively use the metric system. Don't get me wrong, it's a massive change and would probably require many labels to include both measurements during the transition for a long time.

Also, schools may teach metric but I don't think many people even know the conversion from kilogram to pound.

This reads as if there are benefits to both and the US uses each for different purposes.

Is there a benefit of the standard system that I'm missing out on?

djent• 13 years ago

One could make a comparison to legacy code used by ancient equipment. The only real problem with imperial units is that they are now less used than metric units in the majority of the world.

hollerith• 13 years ago

>Is there a benefit of the standard system that I'm missing out on?

Yes, the benefit of not mandating the use of the metric system in the US is that about 300 million people can continue to go about their lives without needing to adapt to literally thousands of tedious changes.

jmathai2• 13 years ago

That's why I stated any reasonable change would require a transitional period.

I agree with you but that's the kind of logic that impedes progress.

soperj2• 13 years ago

Off the top of my head, it's 2.2 pounds in a kg. It's the f to c conversion that is loopy, divide by 9/5 and add 32, something like that, or the opposite.

Benefit of the metric system is easy conversion between units. Multiplication factor between cm,m,km is 100,1000. What's the multiplication factor between inches,yards,miles? I have no idea.

lawnchair_larry2• 13 years ago

"So choose to live your life in metric if you want, and thank you for signing on."

That captures about all you need to know regarding the whitehouse petition feature. I'm not sure why it exists at this point.

vowelless• 13 years ago

But doesn't that also capture the essence of what the US is all about?

cmelbye4• 13 years ago

I agree, I found this to be a very American response. Its not typical for the US government to mandate large changes like this and force people to do things a certain way. Its just part of the culture.

borlak• 13 years ago

That is what the US is about, and the citizens have spoken through this petition that we want it changed.

Responding to petitions by telling the petitioners to petition harder is kind of pointless.

IvyMike2• 13 years ago

Putting your name on a list with a mouse click is a fairly empty contribution to our democracy; why would you expect anything other than a fairly empty response?

There are other ways to make things happen, but truth be the important things almost always involve a lot of energy, time, and money.

baby5• 13 years ago

Democracy is ruling by the people. And the government has to give the people easy way to express itself. We shouldn't have to "mobilize" and "invest ourselves" heavily to change something in this new connected world. Electronic voting is one great thing, Petition through internet is another great thing if it really had an impact.

aeturnum• 13 years ago

> I'm not sure why it exists at this point.

I suppose you've got a better way to get the Obama administration to state their position on any issue you can wrangle 100k signatures for. It's not direct democracy exactly. It's a good system for allocating administrative time to speak to issues that are not politically expedient or important.

tzs2• 13 years ago

It's President Obama, not Emperor Obama. The petition feature works fine for petitions whose authors have not overlooked this.

lawnchair_larry2• 13 years ago

I understand that your reply is intended to be snide, but I don't understand your underlying point. As someone who is occasionally also snide, I can't fault that part, but can you make it obvious enough so that I know what you're trying to say?

GuiA2• 13 years ago

>"Since the 1970s, all American schools have taught the metric system."

Well they've been doing a terrible job at it then, because I'm a European guy living in the US and my US friends never get a sense of what I'm talking about if I use metric units.

Additionally, I TA'd 2nd year level mechanical engineering courses at a very large state university when I was in grad school, and most of the students would get stumped on problems that involved things such as converting a result in centimeters to millimeters, etc, requiring me to explicitly write "1 cm = 10 mm" on the board/assignment papers.

bitwize• 13 years ago

Well they've been doing a terrible job at it then, because I'm a European guy living in the US and my US friends never get a sense of what I'm talking about if I use metric units.

All Japanese schools teach English, too. Try speaking English in downtown Osaka and marvel at the puzzled looks.

People who are taught a thing and then don't practice it tend to get rusty.

GuiA2• 13 years ago

Properly "teaching metric units" would be synonymous with using them consistently in all science/math/etc. classes throughout middle + high school. Doing this would mean that when entering college, students would have developed an intuitive sense for the metric system.

If what the schools do is just have a 1 hour class which can be boiled down to "Ok, 1 meter is 100 cm, 1000 g is 1 kg", then I wouldn't call that 'teaching'.

(Additionally, I think teaching a secondary language is a project of a completely different scope than teaching a unit system)

jack-r-abbit6• 13 years ago

Working within the metric system seems pretty easy to me. it is converting between them that I fall down. So when a French friend of mine talks about the Kilograms of weight he lost or the cm of rain they got... my mind kind of goes blank while I try to make sense of it.

cmelbye4• 13 years ago

Well, the first part stems from not using the system on a day-to-day basis for the most part. We learn how the system works, learn how to convert, use it in science classes, etc., but don't necessarily know how to estimate how many kilograms we weigh, or how many meters tall we are, how many kilometers away something is, whether or not 38 degrees Celsius is a hot day or an average day, etc.

However, the second part is inexcusable and I'm curious to know which University it is that would accept students that hadn't been through at least one advanced science class in High School where metric would be used extensively and it would be very basic knowledge that 1 cm = 10mm...

gems• 13 years ago

Most probably have a functional understanding of it, but do not have an intuition. Is the teaching supposed to provide an intuitive sense of how big certain units are? What difference does it make?

delive• 13 years ago

It was quite the opposite way for me. Almost all of my engineering courses were in metric. In fact, most of us considered it a 'trick' when english units were used.

Conversions for the metric system seemed much more intuitive for me in math. However english units seemed much more noticeable since they are mostly unique (didn't miss a 0 in a conversion).

Lastly, I agree with a comment below that this is largely a problem of getting rusty. After living both in Europe and the US for significant portions of time, I still have trouble between Celsius and Fahrenheit.

rtpg• 13 years ago

It's just about frames of reference. Just because 9/5*C+32=F doesn't mean people will instantly know what you mean when you say 20 degrees C. Likewise, a 20m2 doesn't mean as much to people used to hearing 550f2

jack-r-abbit6• 13 years ago

I'm one of those people who feel that using the metric system would be better but the "customary" system is so ingrained in my mind that I think it would be a bit difficult to switch. So unless there was some sort of forced need to really learn metric, I probably wouldn't make the effort. Honestly, I think I would need one of those immersion situations where I have no choice but to know it in order to survive.

FigBug• 13 years ago

Canada switched to metric between the mid 70s and mid 80s. I was born in 1977. Things like my height and weight I only know customary units. Food is still advertised in customary units even though it is sold in metric. Pop cans are still 12 fl oz but labelled as 355 ml. My grandfather worked in a mill, and he said after metrification a sheet of plywood still measured 4'x8' but got slightly thinner. Speed and temperature I know in metric because that's the way they are signed / reported. I don't think metrification will ever be completed, we seem stuck in a half way point that works well enough.

andrewem• 13 years ago

When I visited Canada from the US, I bought a 907 gram package of mussels. It's the same 2 pound package they always sold, just with the size converted to metric.

Shalle• 13 years ago

Has this new petition system actually made a difference? Has the goverment actually listened to an petition and formed a law or proposition around it? This is what it's about isn't it? Not just make up some lame story about a fix that never going to solve the issue.

The imperial system is quite flawed. Measuring using yards, feet etc is childish and it's in my mind not logical anywhere.

10 mm = 1 cm, 100 cm = 1 meter. vs 12 inch = 1 fot, 3 fot = 1 yard? wut?

The metric system must be alot easier to learn as a child as well. Just my opinion.

mynegation2• 13 years ago

Disclaimer: I am European living in Canada and I wish metric system to be the only system everywhere and hate to use imperial system.

Having said that I have to recognize that it is a matter of habit. I am pretty sure there are people for whom metric system looks stupid.

There is a logic behind imperial system. In it, units are duodecimal (base-12) as opposed to decimal units of metric system. The rationale for that is that 12 is divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6, whereas 10 is divisible only by 2 and 5. Apparently dividing things into 3 and 4 parts was very important when people were not educated enough to understand the concept of fractional numbers. Babylonian numerals were base-60, there are still special names for numbers 11 and 12 in many languages, and day is split into 24 (12*2) hours and hour is 60 minutes and minute is 60 seconds.

jack-r-abbit6• 13 years ago

But 12 only shows up with "inches in a foot".

3 ft in a yard. 5280 ft in a mile. 16 oz in a pound/pint. 8 oz in a cup. 2 cups in a pint. 2 pints in a quart. 4 quarts in a gallon... and so on. The imperial system is very inconsistent in what can be divided by what. So if that was important... they failed.

It is also kind of strange that we don't really have a unit of measure between "yard" and "mile", do we? Something between 3 ft and 5280 ft would be nice. :)

baby5• 13 years ago

I think they asked carriers the right to unlock phones. Something like that. After a petition.

gcb02• 13 years ago

"we already use metric -- but really we don't use it"

great political response. And we pay this guy salary?!?

SilasX• 13 years ago

>That responsibility [to teach the metric system] is growing as more students look to careers in science, technology, engineering, and math, where metric is universal.

Er, I'm pretty sure it's not that important for a career in math, unless he's talking about "metric spaces" or something like that.

I'm guessing it's only there because if you mention science, technology, and engineering, you have to round out the STEM.

baby5• 13 years ago

I don't know if it's part of it, but the short scale/long scale of different countries is annoying (billion doesn't mean the same thing in France or the US).

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Billion

gcb02• 13 years ago

This is garbage. How is it a decision of the people, if all official signs and communications are about Miles?

Last time i checked you were mandated to have Miles per hour readings in the dashboard to even be able to sell your car in the US. how is that choice as the article says?

asperous• 13 years ago

Of all the things we need to spend Billions of dollars on, it isn't a move to change numbers on road signs and create mass confusion.

Like QWERTY, imperial units work fine enough for most people despite advantages of other systems.

fusiongyro• 13 years ago

There's a strip of road just east of Santa Fe around Glorieta which has signage in metric. I always figured it existed solely for the purpose of being brought up in discussions like these. A really odd and pointless thing.

DanHulton• 13 years ago

Interesting that they chose "customary" over the proper "imperial".

cmelbye4• 13 years ago

Calling our units imperial is inaccurate and not proper. Our system is called customary. Our measurements were based on British units before they were standardized into imperial units.

mirkules2• 13 years ago

To add to this, there are real differences between the imperial and US customary systems: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Comparison_of_the_imperial_and_...

jleader2• 13 years ago

The US doesn't use imperial gallons. I think Canada used to use them, and I know the UK did, before they converted to liters. I don't know a specific name for the system of units of measure that includes US gallons.

cmelbye4• 13 years ago

"Customary"...

crazygringo• 13 years ago

> So choose to live your life in metric if you want.

Ummm... not really. I can't choose to have speed limits posted in kph. I can't choose to buy my gas in liters instead of gallons. I can't choose for highway signs to tell me how many km away the exit is.

I'm pretty sure that's the kind of thing people are talking about when they ask for metric.

baby5• 13 years ago

This is what I was thinking. The speed limits and other "official" things must be changed by the government if they want to take a real step into metric system. There is no self choice anymore here. We are bound by the government's choices.

jleader2• 13 years ago

The response said they're working on changing the regulations to allow businesses to only label in metric if they prefer (today, mostly they can choose between either traditional-only, or dual-labeling, aside from things like pharmaceutical dosages and nutritional content labeling, which are already metric-only (dosages are in milligrams, liquid dosages are often dual fluid ounces and cubic centimeters, nutrition is grams of fat/protein/carbs, milligrams of salt, etc.)).

I remember in the 1970s, when highway signs were getting converted to show both miles and kilometers; I think that got stopped because of the costs (the signs have to be bigger, they may confuse people, etc.).

Aloha2• 13 years ago

I should also point out the UK uses miles too.

georgecmu• 13 years ago

Not strictly true.

I-19 from Tucson, AZ to Nogales in Mexico has distances posted in kph, so you can choose to drive on that freeway to tell you how many km away the exit is.

You may not be able to buy gas in liters instead of gallons, but you may be able to sell them in liters if you own a gas station and are willing to purchase the equipment and make that choice.

from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Interstate_19

Interstate 19 is unique among US Interstates, because signed distances are given in meters (hundreds or thousands as distance-to-exit indications) or kilometers (as distance-to-destination indications), and not miles. However, the speed limit signs give speeds in miles per hour. According to the Arizona Department of Transportation (ADOT), metric signs were originally placed because of the push toward the metric system in the United States at the time of the original construction of the highway.

pge• 13 years ago

Its not the only one. Highways near oak ridge, Tennessee are also dual signed in metric and english units. I think it has something to do with the natiomal lab, but I dont know the history.

tzs2• 13 years ago

> I can't choose to buy my gas in liters instead of gallons.

I suspect that for the vast majority of people, this particular problem is not much of a roadblock toward personal adoption of the metric system, because I suspect most people buy their gas in one of two ways:

1. they buy whatever it takes to fill up their tank, or

2. they buy whatever it takes to cost a specific dollar amount.

malkia3• 13 years ago

I still can't get used to the US system, after living here for more than 13 years...

Some years ago, one very smart american coworker told me why the US chose the non-metric system. Back in the days people had to divide things - land, materials, lots of things equally between people. If your system is "12" based, then you can divide by 2, 3, 4 and 6 (well 4 and 6 are obvious), but if it's metric then it's only by 2 and 5.

Not that you can't divide by 2 and 5, but you'll get rational numbers, not integer.

Not sure how true this story is, but even if it's not, it's still amazing :)

(Another story I've heard from him was why cities around Los Angeles were named after saints - San Diego, Santa Monica, etc. - All of them were connected by a day run with a monkey - this way creating a support for the established christian missionary settlements - something like it).

soperj2• 13 years ago

California was a Spanish colony and the Catholics liked to name their cities after saints.

mynegation2• 13 years ago

You probably meant a "run with a donkey"? But I do find the concept of a "run with a monkey" extremely entertaining!

malkia3• 13 years ago

Lol - honest mistake.... Same as the one that Donkey Kong creators have made I guess.... ah!

ubasu• 13 years ago

All the Sans and Santas are California Missions [1] along the El Camino Real [2], also know as US 101 for the most part:

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spanish_missions_in_California [2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/El_Camino_Real_(California)

dragonwriter2• 13 years ago

> All the Sans and Santas are California Missions

Not all the Sans and Santas in California are missions; there are 21 missions -- not all of which are in cities named "San" or "Santa" (e.g., Mission San Francisco de Solano is in Sonoma, CA) -- and 33 cities that are "San" or "Santa"-something.

chrsstrm• 13 years ago

It would be great to switch and use metric exclusively, but think of how cost prohibitive it would be. In the transportation industry alone you are talking about replacing all signage (speed limit signs, mile marker signs, distance to X signs), swapping units on cars and trucks by default, converting gas stations to use liters, and of course re-writing all traffic laws that are speed related. When you really look at what it would take to switch, I think the only real barrier is more cash than anyone would be willing to spend. The upside of a complete changeover would be the incredibly lucrative consulting gigs to assist all involved.

penthehuman• 13 years ago

You have to start somewhere though, it can be a transition over time as well. Say a law was passed that all new roadside signs erected from date X will have both m and km, then at date y, years down the road, all new signs only list km.

For cars, just use the same dials and displays they use in Canadian cars, metric is the primary unit with imperial also shown, again, on new cars only, no need to retrofit all old vehicles.

bitops• 13 years ago

A perspective on the issue of metric from "The Oatmeal" - http://theoatmeal.com/pl/senior_year/science

Aloha2• 13 years ago

If you interact with the federal government, its all metric, pull up any Radio License, the transmitter data is all metric.

I should point out that we are not the only country in the world to sign their highways in miles, the UK does too.. still.

Americans are lousy at metric, because we dont use it regularly, even though the government does, and the country is technically a metric country.

famousactress• 13 years ago

I had an interesting interaction with our daughter's pediatrician recently. Our daughter was born a bit early and spent the first couple of weeks in the NICU where her feeding was watched very closely. All of her feedings were discussed and recorded in mls. A few weeks after we were out of the hospital we were at a routine checkup and when we reported her recent feedings in mls the doctor told us it was "time to start talking in ounces".

Specifically she said that her preemie parents that continue to talk in mls tend to over-obsess over slight swings in the daily numbers. I found it intriguing that we'd been jumped out of the metric system for this, but it occurred to me that I never hear anyone talk about centiliters (the closest metric equivalent to an ounce).

I guess my question is: what's on non-US baby bottles?

medecau• 13 years ago

Not sure what's on baby bottles but on beer bottles I see stuf like:

- 2L - large coke

- 1.5L - popular for large wate bottles and regular coke

- 1L - Large beer bottles, medium coke and co., most family sized juice or iced tee packs, pretty much all regular milk.

- 0.75 L - wine

- 75cl - common in wine and some water

- 50cl - mostly water and some larger beer cans

- 33cl - regular beer bottle and cans

- 25cl - I think I have seen beer and wine bottles of this size

- 22cl

- 20cl - "minis" are small beer bottles, lots of juice packs and chocolate milk

Smaller is probably what they give babies, wouldn't find it weird to see mls used.

I overhear my cousins talk about full doses or relative comparisons. e.g. "one flask", "more than yesterday", "he was hungry"

Note that I rarely refer to the quatities. Usually I ask for a certain sized bottle like this:

- "small bottle of water" - I expect 25-33cl but 50cl is not rare. Sometimes I get asked in reply, "half a liter"?

- "a beer please" - 33cl superbock

- "coke, plese" - .33 either can or bottle - sometimes a cup with too much ice and the total volume of 20cl but I know I'm getting fucked

- "food for babies" - whatever I get handed...

joshwayne• 13 years ago

Overall I think it was a well thought out response to the petition. However, I think the exposure that Americans have to the metric system was played up. Yes, it's been taught in schools but lack of practical use in everyday life means it was quickly forgotten. From my own experience, I had no reference for rough conversions between systems until a couple years ago when I started going to a gym that had all the weights in kilos. Only then did I have some reference to how the two systems related without looking it up.

bostonpete• 13 years ago

There seems to be a lot of anger in the comments about this. Given that there's very little popular support for changing things, why would the White House cater to a vocal minority on this? People are perfectly comfortable and happy with the imperial system and conversion between systems (if you need any sort of precision) is as easy as pulling out your smartphone.

mirkules2• 13 years ago

We will never change to the metric system because then we would have to call football "Approximately-One-Third-Meter-Ball". The field would have to be measured in meters - 91.44 meters. A first down would have to be 9.144 meters, and I don't think they could measure it that accurately with those orange cones and chains.

And finally, soccer would finally become properly known as football, and all hell would break loose among the more hardcore formerly-known-as-football fans.

neves• 13 years ago

blah! It it isn't mandatory, it won't happen. Too much inertia. The GPS example is proof. In android, if your locale is English (American) it isn't possible to set Google Maps to use metric. The modern Google guys will force you to use these weird imperial system.

joetek• 13 years ago

> Since the 1890s, U.S. customary units (the mile, pound, teaspoon, etc.) have all been defined in terms of their metric equivalents.

I don't know what the "official" definition is, but pounds are most often defined as 0.45359 kg. The problem is, pounds and kilograms are fundamentally different.

A pound is a measurement of weight (or the force that gravity exerts on an object), while kilograms are measures of mass. When you are measuring different things, we run into all kinds of issues of translation. You almost never hear of a pound being converted to "newtons" which would probably be more accurate.

The US needs to join the rest of the world. http://www.joetek.ca/the-list-of-countries-that-dont-use-the...

drallison• 13 years ago

The electronic industry is already in metric. Distances are measured, for example, in units of 2.54 centimeters.

White House response to the petition requesting a switch to metric

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