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this post was submitted on 08 Mar 2025
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Today I Learned
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I guess this is a US cultural thing. I grew up in a metric country and decimals are much easier for me to compare than fractions.
Who said anything about fractions? Whole numbers are easier than decimals and fractions.
And no, this isn't just a US thing. I'm certain your country uses things like "parts per million".
In metric countries, parts-per notation is common but it’s normally per million, billion, trillion, etc. Parts per 10 million is not common. Using an uncommon parts-per notation makes it difficult to compare between countries for instance as it’s unlikely that other countries are reporting in parts per 10 million.
The imperial measurement system uses fractions, 3/4 inch, etc. The metric system uses decimals, 19mm, etc.
So to represent this data in a metric country you would use per million inhabitants and use 2 significant figures. Decimals are easy for people who grew up in metric countries to understand.
I moved to Canada which used a lot of imperial measurements for building materials and tools (it’s a weird mix). I find the imperial system confusing with its use of fractions but I know lots of people that grew up with this system prefer it.
That’s why I think this globally uncommon per 10 million inhabitants might feel normal for Americans.
It's not about being normal. This data is for scientists. The denomination was a deliberate choice given the various sizes of the data. It might be as low as single digits in some cases.
We use decimals all the time. We're not dumb. But when making direct comparisons of values, it's a simple fact that comparing 5 to 20 is easier than comparing 0.05 to 0.2. This is a scientific fact. It's easier for your brain to parse. You can't deny that. Go ask a psychologist. In addition, the data is cleaner. It's easier to print "5" than "0.05", and then you mention the denominator under the graph or table of data.
Every engineer and scientist in the US uses metric, and it doesn't matter what the average person uses. Proper home cooks find bread recipes with metric weights for ingredients, for example. Woodworkers use feet and inches. People who use the Imperial system are just people using what they know. It's entirely moot to this conversation. I don't know why you keep bringing up fractions and the Imperial system as if that adds any weight to your argument about the actual topic at hand. The topic being scientists using a deliberate unit of measure to make it easy to print values and compare them at a glance.
I'm not suggesting this at all. I'm arguing that using "parts per 10 million" makes more sense to an American audience because fractions are more common in America. So using non common denominators is easier for an American audience. Whereas in metric countries, using standard denominators like thousand, million, billion, etc with decimals and significant figures is easier to interpret.
Sure, but you're ignoring the additional cognitive load of using non common denominators. And losing the ability to easily compare these metrics with others.
Imperial measurements are commonly used in construction & civil engineering in the US.