Fahrenheit vs. Celsius

[Dick Adams]

When I go to England, I hear this stuff about Rugby players being tougher than American Football players. Eventually I came to ignore it. The same is true of Fahrenheit and Celsius. One is not better than the other. They are both interval data which means that while the numbers may have significance, they are just man made scales for ease of use by people.

Note that 100F is not twice as hot as 50F nor is 100C twice as hot as 50C. For that you have to convert to Kelvin. It's interesting that we never hear people arguing for worldwide adoption of the Kelvin scale!

Dick

[Charlie Bress]

Fahrenheit has the advantage of being a little more precise. Between freezing and boiling there are 180 degrees while on Celsius there are only

100.

But you knew that.

I won't even tread in the quagmire of inches and feet versus meters.

Or on the domestic front miles per hour versus knots.

If we all got together on this what would the publishers of conversion tables do?

Charlie

[trader4]

Hmmm, You don't like decimal points? If I take the same test instrument that measures in both F and C, as many do, and it it reads out 70.0F and 21.11 that the 21.11 is less precise?

[GWB]

How many cubits are in a furlong??

[jim]

[Charlie Bress]

Of course, you are right. I wonder where you bout a reasonable priced temperature measuring instrument that is calibrated to hundredths of a degree in Celsius. In non-lab environments they must be exceedingly rare. I don't think you could characterize the as being "many".

Charlie Who is fond of decimal points. Some of them are my best friends.

[Tony Hwang]

Hmmm, Real accuracy is from binary. You must have 6 fingers or something?

[gfretwell]

That is only south American rugby players, they eat their dead

[gfretwell]

The classic difference between precision and accuracy. You may have an inaccurate measurement of temperature, precise out to two decimal places.

[emailaddress]

Who is Kelvin?

[gfretwell]

You didn't say which furlong or which cubit but...

1 furlong [international] = 453.081 081 081 cubit [Roman]

[GWB]

OK, how much wood would a woodchuck...oh never mind.

[Joseph Meehan]

Of course you must admit that 100º for boiling and 0º for freezing makes more sense.

BTW did you know that 98.6º is really 37º

[Old Fangled]

[e-mail] wrote in news:7igal2tm7vl1t1t9gc7jnii449afkufcn8@

4ax.com:

[Joseph Meehan]

He's one cool guy.

[Joseph Meehan]

Make that absolutely one cool guy. :-)

[HeyBub]

"Joseph Meehan"

Actually, zero for absolute zero makes more sense. Then we end up with something silly like 273.15 for the freezing point of water.

[HarryS]

Or, he could be one absolute hottie. :-)

[Doug Miller]

As a practical matter, it makes absolutely no sense at all -- how would you calibrate such a thermometer? A scale based on the freezing and boiling points of water -- which is easily reproducible almost anywhere -- is eminently practical.

[Harry K]

Which is why I prefer to use the C scale. On a hot day, I am a lot cooler :)

Harry K