this post was submitted on 11 Jan 2024
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The real issue is "Do you really need to know or care?" in daily life. The odds are very, very great you don't unless you are a farmer or surveyor and if you are, you will know.
It's just like the trope of " 'Muricans" don't know how long a mile is! Stupid feckers." But it doesn't matter if you "know" how many inches, feet, rods, or chains there are in a mile for virtually everyone. Any of those other units would not be the best choice for the scale a mile is used for. Just like an astronomer doesn't use miles or kilometers to measure the distance between stars - the scale of measurement is all wrong. Neither 'Murican or European cares about smaller units that make up miles or kilometers when traveling. Be honest - Do you really think about how many decimeters it is between Berlin and Paris? What you really care about is "How long will it take to get there." And measuring travel by time is universal.
In any case, all measurement systems are just made up units thought up by some random dude. Use what is appropriate for what you need. If that's metric, great! If it's US Customary, awesome! If it's SI, even better than either of the other two!
@bluewing @corsicanguppy well, if you want to run 2km and you have this track that is 200m long, you know how many times you need to run it without even thinking about it. If you want to run 2 miles and you have this track that is 200 yards long, you better have your phone with you to use the calculator
i'm pretty sure i can divide 3600 by 180 in my head. 20 laps will do it.
You are confusing absolute accuracy and required precision. No one needs to care about exactly how many meters or yards to run a kilometer or mile on a track. It's about how many laps. If you are running a mile on a 200 yard track you know you will run 9 laps. And with only very minor exceptions, outdoor tracks in the US are 440 yards or 1/4 mile. So you know you will run 4 laps to get a mile. Or any even fraction of a mile. So there is no need to even know how long the track is and even less thinking about how far to run than you do.
And if you are into cross country running, the odds are great these days you are wearing a smart watch that will tell you when you've run that mile or kilometer.
You only know that after using your calculator.
No, you just do it in your head, provided you can do your arithmetic as well as a child can.
First you need to know there are 1760 yards in a mile which isn't common. Next you need to divide 1760 by 200. If you ask a child, they aren't going to know to round up to 1800 and say 9 as an estimate.
Telling on yourself
@bluewing oh yeah I'm sure not anyone in the US knows how many miles they run when they run on a track, and I'm sure they just count the laps. I would do the same if I had grown up in a place that uses yards and miles 😁
the standard length of a track is a quarter mile, pretty sure that's common knowledge
Nope, just people using the appropriate common sense units to measure what they are doing! Besides, less counting is more better if the state of education is any indication of the future.......