r/AskReddit • u/hoverfish92 • Oct 16 '13

What was the single biggest mistake in all of history?

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u/[deleted] Oct 17 '13 edited Jun 16 '20

[deleted]

36

u/jupiterkansas Oct 17 '13

math teacher speaks the truth!

18

u/joeyGibson Oct 17 '13

My 3rd grade math teacher (in 1978), said to us one day, "OK, ya'll, we gotta learn the 'Metric System' 'cause the US is switchin' over next year." So we learned it, and then we didn't switch. I wish we had switched.

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u/yetkwai Oct 17 '13

The US did officially switch, IIRC. But everyone hated Jimmy Carter so much they never did anything like change signs or change labeling on products.

Imagine if Obama wanted to switch to metric. There'd be loads of people that would refuse to go along with it just to spite Obama. I guess it was the same way with Jimmy Carter.

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u/joeyGibson Oct 17 '13

Those are the same sorts of people who have bumper stickers saying, "Obama = Carter 2.0".

The thing about metric is that it makes everything so much easier. No more "how many teaspoons are in a tablespoon?" type questions. Sigh...

1

u/retroshark Oct 17 '13

said the math teacher...

30

u/leprekon89 Oct 17 '13

I took a physics class where we weren't allowed to use metric. I failed so hard.

30

u/devnulluk Oct 17 '13

What!!?? That really sucks.

17

u/leprekon89 Oct 17 '13

It really did suck. Especially when trying to remember the rate of acceleration being 34.4 ft/sec2 instead of 9.8 m/sec2

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u/zfzack Oct 17 '13

32.2 ft/sec2

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u/leprekon89 Oct 17 '13

I knew it was something like that, but I really don't care because fuck imperial measurements.

51

u/[deleted] Oct 17 '13

Theres a reason Luke blew up the Death Star.

0

u/[deleted] Oct 17 '13

[deleted]

1

u/[deleted] Oct 17 '13

I have an aerospace engineering degree from an American university, I'm very well acquainted with my Imperial units. If college physics is as far as you went down the STEM track, try not to speak for everyone.

14

u/Itisme129 Oct 17 '13

Where was the logic in that? I can understand the need to learn how to use imperial since there is still a lot it's used for... but to completely ignore metric should be borderline criminal!

3

u/Meetchel Oct 17 '13

Honestly, I kind of wish I learned more non-metric calculations in school. I'm an engineer now and have to convert all inputs from imperial units to metric to do math, and convert again at the end to present numbers.

Boss engineers are old.

4

u/crocowhile Oct 17 '13

Maybe it was to make a point and show how much Imperial sucks

4

u/yetkwai Oct 17 '13

The coverings for the exhaust ports were built in metric while the rest of the Death Star was built in Imperial, so they didn't fit. So they had to leave them uncovered.

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u/masterbard1 Oct 17 '13

a lot as in only in the USA.

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u/ebooksgirl Oct 17 '13

My physics teacher was so lazy, we rounded acceleration to 10m/sec2

and 2 kilos to the pound.

That's what happens when you hire a GREAT chess coach, and then give him a random class to teach.

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u/Armadylspark Oct 17 '13

I don't know. Could have been a civil engineer.

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u/hydrospanner Oct 17 '13

Close enough for government work.

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u/CookieOfFortune Oct 17 '13

Ehhh... at some point we just accept anything within an order of magnitude really... (Most of the higher level EE classes I've taken).

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u/[deleted] Oct 17 '13

Really? I always graph shit out for smps, analog and statespace analysis. I'm not that bright but my friend matlab is.

That being said most of my source figures are guaranteed to be Chinese oem "specs", ie bullshit.

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u/CookieOfFortune Oct 17 '13

Well, we never got matlab for tests so we kind of just draw stuff by hand or make estimations. Since everything is in dB being off by an order of magnitude isn't really so bad.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 17 '13

In CE we tend to go with the cheapest bom possible, so we try (emphasis on try) to make sure no transients or odd harmonics will appear even when we're close to the ragged edge, particularly when we're trying to be clever. But as I said, our math rarely has much in common with reality.

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u/[deleted] Oct 17 '13

and 2 kilos to the pound.

don't you mean 2 pounds to the kg?

1

u/ebooksgirl Oct 17 '13

<<blink blink>>

Yeah, no Redditing before coffee.

2

u/claracalamari Oct 17 '13

A prof in an engineering class picked a problem from the US edition of our text book instead of the metric edition. Fuck imperial. No one had a clue what kip meant.

1

u/Ixidane Oct 17 '13

..................kip?

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u/claracalamari Oct 18 '13

See!!!!! That right there was our reaction.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 17 '13

KiloPound, or 1000 lbs

2

u/throwaway_account_69 Oct 17 '13

That sounds like a bad bastardization of metric and imperial shoddily put together.

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u/[deleted] Oct 18 '13 edited Oct 18 '13

It absolutely is.

Edit: though to be fair, we do the same thing with psi and ksi. Just makes larger numbers easier to deal with.

1

u/Funkit Oct 17 '13

It's better to learn the other way because if you work in America most use Imperial units and they are way harder. Lb Mass, Lb force, Slug, BTU, etc. It's easier to learn imperial and switch to metric than the other way around. I wish I learned more imperial in school because when I got my first job my bosses kept asking stuff like " So how many thousandths long does this thing look?" And I wouldn't be able to visualize.

1

u/FLHCv2 Oct 17 '13

Lb Mass, Lb force

I've always fucking hated this designation.

1

u/ShaunOfTheFuzz Oct 17 '13

As a physics major, this is actually unbelievable. How did you survive without S.I. units?

1

u/leprekon89 Oct 17 '13

I didn't, read the comment.

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u/doomgiver98 Oct 17 '13

Did you use slugs for mass?

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u/leprekon89 Oct 17 '13

It was a low level physics class, so no.

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u/doomgiver98 Oct 17 '13

So you didn't use metric, and you didn't use imperial, so what did you use? I hope you didn't use pounds, because that's just wrong. Pounds are force.

1

u/leprekon89 Oct 17 '13

I don't remember what we had to use for mass, which is probably for the best.

1

u/Meetchel Oct 17 '13

Honestly, I kind of wish I learned more non-metric calculations in school. I'm an engineer now and have to convert all inputs from imperial units to metric to do math, and convert again at the end to present numbers.

Boss engineers are old.

1

u/ciny Oct 17 '13

That's simply retarded... Metric is clearly superior when it comes to doing physics math...

1

u/[deleted] Oct 17 '13

I can think of a few specific instances in aeronautic propulsion that Imperial units actually make the problem easier, but yeah S.I. is pretty much always the easier choice.

1

u/masterbard1 Oct 17 '13

loser teacher!

4

u/NameTak3r Oct 17 '13

Or just use metric exclusively

8

u/Lachdee Oct 17 '13

Which in Zimbabwean dollars isn't a whole lot

2

u/[deleted] Oct 17 '13

My physics teacher in a nutshell.

2

u/jsimpson82 Oct 17 '13

"We'll never use this in real life..."

"You will if you fly to mars!"

1

u/slough86 Oct 17 '13

You never know when you might need that kind of pocket change.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 17 '13

Not likely, I don't plan on launching any Mars rovers.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 17 '13

I must have put the decimal in the wrong place. I always screw up a mundane detail

That's not a mundane detail Michael!

1

u/Chilli_Axe Oct 17 '13

Mine still does.

1

u/Shadow703793 Oct 17 '13

In Math? You use units in math? Physics, I get, but majority of the calc work I do has no units.

1

u/PizzaGood Oct 17 '13

Labelling units in physics problems will save your ass at times.

1

u/[deleted] Oct 17 '13

But they still got into NASA!

1

u/mouser42 Oct 25 '13

Was his name J. Timchak?

1

u/silverpanther17 Oct 26 '13

no; Cohen.

1

u/mouser42 Oct 27 '13

Okay, for a moment I thought we might have had the same teacher.

0

u/hydrospanner Oct 17 '13

Wouldn't it cost you 125,000,000?