2007-08-06-PatNaughtin2

Pats' talk today went very well. There was a good size crowed who stayed around even though it was a 90 minute talk instead of the usual 60. I'll post a link when it becomes available on Google Video.

Here's my initial notes.

He started with a story about his wife getting a recipe with gills in it and finding over 30 definitions of the gill which made it quite impossible to understand what the recipe meant to say. As he pointed out, using bizarre measurements with multiple meanings (especially ones that go out of fashion) can lead to a loss of knowledge. If you don't have a consistent, standard measure like the liter to compare to, saying something contains a gill is completely useless.

Then came a slide on measuring energy usage (particularly interesting when you're talking about global warming). I knew there were a large number of ways of expressing energy usage in customary measures, but it hadn't occurred to me that there were over 95. Of course, the modern metric system only has the Joule so working out what's more efficient is far easier and things that you might not have considered measuring between (such as wind power compared to food or dynamite) become possible.

The discussion on the effects of different approaches of metrication (direct metrication, metric conversion, hidden metrication or the head in the sand approach) and the differences that makes to the speed of metrication. Pat asserts that metrication is inevitable, it's just a matter of how fast you want it to happen (and thus how painless you want it to be). Given the way the world has moved even in my own life time, this seems like a reasonable assertion and I'm (obviously) strongly in favor of the shortest possible path (for some industries in the Australian metrication process, only one year).

Fractions and metric can be summed up as "No fractions are necessary at all ? ever!"

Following this was a discussion on the use of centimeters vs millimeters. Millimeters have a strong advantage of never needing a decimal point. There's no mistakes via "was that 23.45 or 234.5?" and big numbers really aren't the problem that antagonists like to make out (5 or 6 figures are easily rememberable). There also seems to be some correlation between using millimeters vs centimeters and the amount of time it takes to metricate (millimeters are much faster). It's not an obvious conclusion, but there does seem to be some decent evidence to back this theory up.

The discussion of social proof correlated nicely with just having read "Influence: Science and Practice (4th ed)". Basically, humans take queues from other people around them. If someone is up for making a decision (be it fashion or the use of metric) others around that person will make similar choices unless they have an overriding reason not to.

Finally Pat discussed a little of the history of the metric system (including his recent studies on John Wilkins and a comparison of Wilkins and Jefferson's proposed measurement systems).

Thanks again to Pat for a most interesting talk.