Tag Archive

Metrics

Posted on 2019-02-24 by Melissa

“I do know one thing about me: I don’t measure myself by others’ expectations.”
Sonia Sotomayor

I had a funny experience at the gym the other day that got me thinking about metric conversion.

Entering my weight into the elliptical machine, I realized that I was mistakenly inputting pounds instead of the expected kilograms. Basically, I’ve been telling the machine that I weigh 342 pounds (rather than 155), totally skewing my calorie burn stats. And not in a good way; I’m burning fewer calories than I thought.

This isn’t the first time this confusion has arisen. In fact, it was a recent conversation with a nurse, who was asking me for my height and weight in centimetres and kilos (rather than in feet/inches and pounds), which left me drawing a total blank and clued me into the possibility that I might be having a misunderstanding with the gym equipment.

Canada, like most commonwealth countries, converted from imperial to metric in the 1970’s. So, in theory, I should have grown up fully metric but I swear I never stopped thinking of certain measurements in imperial. Growing up with American born parents probably didn’t help any.

I suppose it depends what I’m measuring. I do understand and use metric, with certain notable exceptions such as: my height, my weight, measuring a room, measuring a penis etc. Although it does beg the question: what else remains?

I rather enjoy some of the older imperial units of measurement. Going forward, I may well give distances to tourists and visiting relatives in chains and furlongs, refer to my apartment size in rods and reference my weight in gallons. When choosing archaic (and arguably inaccurate) measurement units, it’s important to always consider vanity sizing (i.e. do you want the area/weight/distance to seem smaller or larger than it is?).

Seriously though, it turns out this mishmash of measurements is a relatively common Canadian experience. Which suggests to me that the gym might want to default their machines to imperial instead. Except that, things do shift over time and more and more, young Canadians (20 somethings) actually know their height and weight in metric.

Then there’s fahrenheit and celsius. My American born mother always talks in fahrenheit, which forces me to consult google each and every time for a conversion calculator. And it happens a lot; because weather is pretty much what Canadians talk about. In that way, she is truly Canadian.

What about you? Do you use imperial, metric or a mix? Are you able to easily convert and move between the two? Have you had any funny misunderstandings?

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Dog Beers & Vanity Sizing

Posted on 2018-10-28 by Melissa

“It takes a very long time to become young.”
Pablo Picasso

A friend recently shared a meme that read: “In dog beers I’ve only had one” which made me laugh and then gave me pause.

I’m not very good at math but isn’t one human year about 7 dog years?

In other words, one dog year is 1/7th of a human year and one dog beer is like 1/7th of a beer. So the meme is basically saying they’ve had 1/7th of a beer. Of course the intention is probably to suggest excessive drinking; but somehow the joke ends up being funny anyway.

Which got me wondering: why did we even create dog years? Presumably so that we could equate a dog’s life span to our own. You can just look at a handy chart and you can see that your 3-year-old dog is about 28. I mean not really though. Your 3-year-old dog likely doesn’t have very much in common with a 28-year-old human at all.

But it does give you a rough reference for when your dog might die. So when you refer to your dog in dog years what you’re really saying is: I estimate my dog will die in approximately 10 years. Other than that it’s fairly meaningless.

Anyway, this whole tradition of creating arbitrary scales of measurement is a funny one. Take for instance shoe sizing. It occurred to me recently that my size 7 foot isn’t actually 7 inches at all.

A quick review of a sizing chart confirmed that my size 7 foot is actually 9¼ inches. My husband’s size 11 foot on the other hand is actually 1015⁄16 inches.

What you may have noticed is that my 9¼ inch foot is made to sound smaller by calling it a size 7 whereas my husbands 1015⁄16  inch foot is made to sound slightly bigger by calling it a size 11; it seems shoes come with a historical form of vanity sizing.

The weirdest part of all of this is that straight up inches (and fractions thereof) would work perfectly well to describe everyone’s shoe size. There’s no need for vanity conversions. But apparently we women want to be forever smaller and younger.

Geoduck courtesy of Taylor Shellfish Farms

All of which got me thinking: if I do indeed want to appear youthful I might consider referring to myself in some version of dog years. But not dog years obviously; as dogs are a relatively short-lived animal, which would make me several hundred dog years old.

No, I need a long-lived creature like the elegant Geoduck (pronounced “gooey-duck”). Geoducks have been known to live up to 168 years, making me at 38 human years a mere 23 Geoduck years old (100 divided by 168 x 38 = 23).

Better yet, I might try a Red sea urchin, who have been known to live up to 200 years; making me a mere 19 Red sea urchin years old. But maybe that’s a bit excessive.

Yes, I think I’ll stick with Geoduck. I am 23 Geoduck years old, if anyone asks and I’ve had 14 dog beers; which sounds worse than it is.

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