Mathematically challenged Americans who fear a conversion to the metric system are worrying needlessly, says Gail Ratcliff, chairman of a math and computer science department here.
Ratcliff herself went through a national conversion to metrics in Australia and had to reconvert to the old system when she moved to the United States.As head of the computer and science department at University of Missouri St. Louis, she obviously is anything but mathematically challenged. Even so, she thinks switching to the metric system would be easy for almost everyone.
For one thing, Ratcliff said, the metric system is based on the figure 10, just like the American monetary system. That makes it much simpler than a system based on 12 inches to a foot, 3 feet to a yard, 16 ounces to a pound, 2 pints to a quart and the rest of our mathematically muddled measurements.
Born and reared in Australia, Ratcliff came to the United States to do graduate work at Yale University and then took a teaching job at St. Louis 11 years ago.
Australians went through two major changes of a mathematical nature, first in the mid-1960s, switching from a British monetary system of pence, shillings and pounds to an American-style system of dollars and cents. A few years later, they adopted the metric system for all measurements.
"It went very smoothly," Ratcliff said. "There was a transition period. At first, the highway signs had dual terms - both miles and kilometers - but after a few years, they were replaced by ones with just kilometers."
Probably, she added, some people had worried about coping with new terms for buying products like groceries.
"But they soon realized that one kilogram was equal to about two pounds, so if they wanted to buy a pound of steak, they would just ask for a half-kilo," she said.
"Everyone found it wasn't such a painful process. They soon threw away the conversion tables and became totally accustomed to the new system."
What was hard to accept, Ratcliff noted, was the change in measurements for height and weight. To those used to expressing their heights in feet and their weights in pounds, the metric terms sound strange.
In Australia before the change to the metric system, people had described their weights by using the British measurement based on the "stone" - one stone equals 14 pounds - and most older people have continued to do that, she said.