jtg452 wrote:dragon723 wrote:Well for the merchant it would be a question of which system is more effective and least prone to error. An example could be converting 16435 meters to km vs converting 16435 yards to miles.
It goes 1000 meter om a km. Therefore
16,435 / 1000 -> 16.435 km
It goes 1760 yards on a mile. Therefore
16,435/ 1760 -> 9.338 miles according to my calculator
If the merchant has a good understanding of the metric system he can do most conversion between meters and km in the head without much risk of error. That extends to all measures in the metric system.
Bad comparison.
Meters and yards aren't the same distances- a meter is 3 inches and change longer. You are just moving numbers rather than dealing with the actual distance in question and then pointing and saying, "Aha!" when things don't come out right.
I ran the conversion from metric to Imperial-meters to yards to miles and then kilometers to miles- twice (once with an online conversion program and once with a calculator) and came up with the same answers every time.
There was no suggestion that they are the same distance in meters or yards, just the same number used for both conversions.
And yes, 16435 meters is 17973.5346 yards.