this post was submitted on 17 Mar 2026
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We're taught both metric and US customary units in school. I prefer metric for most things, to the point I have a metric-only tape measure among other things.

However, I'll die on the hill that Fahrenheit is superior for ambient air temperature. 0 degrees to 100 degrees neatly encompasses the range of average surface temperatures seen throughout the year in the contiguous US.

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[–] PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S@lemmy.sdf.org 0 points 3 days ago (1 children)

IMO measurements are actually one of the few areas in life where we are living in a decent timeline because US Customary is basically an affine rescaling of SI Units (affine but not linear because (at least) of x [K] = (x [°F] − 459.67) × 5/9) with exact conversion factors if you're careful. And then my personal preference for the units I was socialized under become irrelevant for practical work.

[–] bluGill@fedia.io 2 points 3 days ago (1 children)

5/9 is close enough to half for most purposes, and 30 is close enough to 32 - you can be within a reasonable margin of error converting to F/C with much easier math. Sure it isn't perfect, but most of the time you don't need that accuracy in the first place.

[–] PM_ME_VINTAGE_30S@lemmy.sdf.org 2 points 2 days ago (1 children)

much easier math

No thank you, I like hard math. I didn't learn all this math to not use it 😆

[–] bluGill@fedia.io 1 points 2 days ago

Just make sure you don't get too many significant digets in your answer and so get the wrong answer.