>
>> On the news yesterday it was revealed that here in the US 80%
>>of kids cannot tell time by looking at a clock. I'm the opposite: I
>>look at the numbers and imagine the face of a clock to know what the
>>time is.
>
>This is not unreasonable, it's about exposure. how many people in the
>US can deal with metric efficiently? I was at primary school when the
>conversion happened here in australia (1974 IIRC) and have no trouble
>working in either system, but my sons are as lost if I say '3 feet' or
>'2 inches', as my dad is if I say '1 metre' or '50 millimetres' (I'm
>sure he even still converts the speedometer reading in his head :) ).
>
When we lived in France, it was my unspoken duty to translate the French
speed limit signs into mph, roughly 5/8 mile for 1 km. That may be how I ended
up doing math in my head.
I loved the Michelin road maps. They were almost as good as
topographicals, just lacking the altitude contours. That's probably why I very
rarely ever us a GPS for navigation, and have only triangulated with a compass
once or twice in the past 30 years.
Chris Trask
N7ZWY / WDX3HLB
Senior Member IEEE
http://www.home.earthlink.net/~christrask/
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