Making the Switch To Metric!

timbeer said:

I.e gallons of water on earth. 320,000,000,000,000,000,000 gallons versus 1260 exalitres

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Oh yeah, I see...exalitres is so much clearer. I can clearly conceptualize exalitres.

A ton of zeros has the hyperbole effect going for it. Exalitres sounds like an obscure hipster thing.

Um, I may be being obtuse here...

I am not an engineer, I only have a degree in mathematics. When you are weighing an object you are using some sort of constant as a comparison. It could be a ml of water, or whatever the hell Henry VIII decided a lb or a hogshead was. I have a difficult time understanding the fuss.

Yes we can say, and hopefully agree, that the metric system is more logical. But some here are suggesting that because a gram is smaller than an ounce, you have better accuracy??? A number is a number. It doesn't care what units you are using. Try making up your own.

I suggest dispensing with units altogether and just counting. I'll find out how many grains of malted barley there are in 10 gallon.... whoops, a mash, how many hop cones in an IPA and cover the numbers on a thermometer with tape and put pencil marks at mash temp and... crap how the hell am I gonna do that?

When I said that using metric was more accurate, I was referring to scaling some one else's recipe to my system or to new crop of hops... If I take an ounce of hops and adjust for a different AA I am much more likely to round the last decimal place... If I am using grams I'll still probably round... But if I round the the .1 gram compared to the .1 ounce (or even the.01 ounce) I'm closer to the actual weight of my hops (I.e more accurate)

Being more accurate will allow me to be more precise in my brewing process from batch to batch...

Now all of this goes out of the window if i am designing a new recipe...

Northcalais40 said:

Yes we can say, and hopefully agree, that the metric system is more logical. But some here are suggesting that because a gram is smaller than an ounce, you have better accuracy??? A number is a number. It doesn't care what units you are using. Try making up your own.

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It's the resolution of the measuring instrument that determines the accuracy.
If I weighed out 2 oz hops on the bathroom scale which has a resolution of 1 lb, I could not get accurate measurements. Most digital household scales have a resolution of 0.1 oz or 1 g. As 0.1 oz is about 2.8 g, you could measure more accurately using the gram scale

-a.

ajf said:

It's the resolution of the measuring instrument that determines the accuracy.
If I weighed out 2 oz hops on the bathroom scale which has a resolution of 1 lb, I could not get accurate measurements. Most digital household scales have a resolution of 0.1 oz or 1 g. As 0.1 oz is about 2.8 g, you could measure more accurately using the gram scale

-a.

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This is exactly what I meant. However, someone did correctly point out that I meant "precision", not accuracy.

I view this as a benefit for using grams for hops. It takes absolutely no effort for me to make this change. If it doesn't work for someone else, that's fine, I'm not trying to convert anyone.

TyTanium said:

Oh yeah, I see...exalitres is so much clearer. I can clearly conceptualize exalitres.

A ton of zeros has the hyperbole effect going for it. Exalitres sounds like an obscure hipster thing.

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Probably the same conversation computer scientists in the 70's had when someone mentioned Gigahertz or petabytes.

timbeer said:

Probably the same conversation computer scientists in the 70's had when someone mentioned Gigahertz or petabytes.

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Aren't petabytes people who eat their cats and dogs?

And if you like prefixes, try the prefixes to illion i.e. million, billion, trillion, quadrillion, pentillion etc. Million only has one meaning, but all the others have two meanings, depending on the country of origin, and the date at which it was used.

-a.

Yeah, not like we've lost a $400,000,000 Mars probe to a conversion error or can't compete with manufactured goods because no other country that doesn't fit in a football stadium uses "Standard".

david_42 said:

Yeah, not like we've lost a $400,000,000 Mars probe to a conversion error or can't compete with manufactured goods because no other country that doesn't fit in a football stadium uses "Standard".

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I don't see a connection between using "standard" and winning manufacturing contracts. I mean, China uses metric, but they don't seem to have any problems churning out loads of Standard sockets, wrenches, and bolts.

timbeer said:

Probably the same conversation computer scientists in the 70's had when someone mentioned Gigahertz or petabytes.

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If you don't mention "petabytes" at any parties, you can avoid appearing to be some kind of urban hipster.

timbeer said:

Probably the same conversation computer scientists in the 70's had when someone mentioned Gigahertz or petabytes.

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Good point.

Cranny04 said:

When I said that using metric was more accurate, I was referring to scaling some one else's recipe to my system or to new crop of hops... If I take an ounce of hops and adjust for a different AA I am much more likely to round the last decimal place... If I am using grams I'll still probably round... But if I round the the .1 gram compared to the .1 ounce (or even the.01 ounce) I'm closer to the actual weight of my hops (I.e more accurate)

Being more accurate will allow me to be more precise in my brewing process from batch to batch...

Now all of this goes out of the window if i am designing a new recipe...

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What this is is pilot error. If you are rounding to decimal places for ease of calculation and losing precision, that is your error. And don't get all significant digits on me. This is not the fault of metric vs sae.

If you have a stick 10 cm long and convert that to meters, it becomes 0.1 m, then you can round it down to 0 m.

One unit of measure can not be more accurate than another. If your scale has a different level of precision for one unit vs another. That is your scale, not the system of measurement.

AnOldUR said:

ummm . . . 3.2 X 10^20

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did you just take a non-metric measurement and raise it to a base 10 power? Can't you create some base 6 scale or something? 16 oz to a pint, 2 pints to a quart, 4 quarts to a gallon, 6 gallons to a "splosh".

Now there are 53 1/3 million trillion sploshes of water on earth. Or 1260 exalitres

Northcalais40 said:

What this is is pilot error. If you are rounding to decimal places for ease of calculation and losing precision, that is your error. And don't get all significant digits on me. This is not the fault of metric vs sae.

If you have a stick 10 cm long and convert that to meters, it becomes 0.1 m, then you can round it down to 0 m.

One unit of measure can not be more accurate than another. If your scale has a different level of precision for one unit vs another. That is your scale, not the system of measurement.

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All of these are reasons I switched to metric.. Because I will be more accurate.. I didn't start this thread to convince other people to switch... I just wanted to know if there were any others doing the same thing...

My scale is stupid... I will round less in grams.. Both are reason enough for me to switch