Author: UK Metric Association

Campaigning for a single, rational system of measurement

Why trundle at 186 when you can whizz along at 300?

The age of high speed rail finally reaches London on November 14th, when the final section of High Speed 1 – or HS1 to its friends – opens, to complete the link from London to Paris and Brussels. This will cut the travel time to just two and a quarter hours, and even less to Brussels, by allowing high speed operation on the final 39 km of route from near Gravesend in Kent into London. But why have the media missed the opportunity to use even more impressive big numbers?

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Are imperial units natural? (and some useful rules of thumb)

One of the claims sometimes made by defenders of imperial weights and measures is that they are “natural”. The metric system (they may say) is all very well for science and technical matters, but for everyday life imperial units like the foot conform to the human scale and are more “natural”,  unlike the arbitrary metric unit, the metre. We examine this argument.

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Using metric – accuracy v precision

A fellow metric supporter who admits to being a little weak on mathematics owned up to not understanding the difference between accuracy and precision when it comes to measurement.

He is probably right in saying that he is not alone and that many people fail to see advantages with metric in this respect.

I offer here two examples in an attempt to clarify the issue, one purely numeric, the other practical involving an everyday example of measurement.

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Units of alcohol – rational metric sizes would solve the problem

Today’s TV news carried a leading story that units of alcohol will be appearing on all bottles, cans cartons etc of alcoholic drinks. People were asked in the street what they thought of this move. Several people asked, what’s a unit?

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