Despite the metrification of the classroom, the GSCE Geography Paper I saw today from Edexcel had a graph showing, in Imperial, the number of bags of sugar sold by Brazil over the past 30 years. There were then some supplementary questions on it.

The graph showed how many 60 lb bags of sugar had been sold.

I noticed another question which referred to area and then distance. The area, of course, was in regulation hectares (50 of them, actually), but the examiners stuck with "1 1/2 miles" when it came to the distance part of the question

I wouldn't get too carried away Tony.

If Brazil packages sugar in 60 lb bags (perhaps for a US market) then so be it. In geography they merely take examples from actual world trade. Whatever the rest of the question concerned itelf with it would have been numbers of bags as a statistical parameter, not getting the candidate to work in lb.

Your reference to the other question is to vague to enable sensible comment.

I think that the message here is that countries that supposedly are "metricated" do not use exclusively metric measures.

Re: Edexcel Geography Paper: 60 lb Bags of Sugar June 11 2004, 2:36 AM

Bud:
I think that the message here is that countries that supposedly are "metricated" do not use exclusively metric measures.


metre:
No mystery. Just recently, I told you that Uncle Sam stipulates USC units on imports. Since poor Brazil cannot sell 60 lb bags of sugar to Europe what would be the point in spending money on displaying dual units. So much for America's measurement imperialism. And you take Europe to task for following in your countries footsteps?

By the way, Toni sounds like he found a needle in a haystack, good luck to him.

Why can't Brazil label the bags in both units and sell them on both sides of the Atlantic? It's not 2010 yet.

re (metre): "By the way, Tony sounds like he found a needle in a haystack, good luck to him"

REPLY: For more needles in the haystack, please see the 'International' section of this bulletin board

or maybe Tony's "needle" was about imperial at school.

In which case:

http://nrich.maths.org/prime/feb00/penta_s.htm

Notice how metre is now spelling Tony's name the female way (Toni). Just how mature is this guy? (metre, I mean, we all know that Tony is VERY mature (no wait!! I didn't mean it like that!!! :O :O ;D))

Bryan! You know that eric "gets off" on being called "metre" so I can easily criticize you too!

And as far as "mature" is concerned I can imagine eric getting *VERY* excited about being called a name for a 'new-fangled' measuring system, if you get my drift!

In fact he probably gets *over* excited about it!

Think about *that* next time you address him that way!!

:-)

Re: Edexcel Geography Paper: 60 lb Bags of Sugar June 11 2004, 7:44 AM


Why can't Brazil label the bags in both units and sell them on both sides of the Atlantic? It's not 2010 yet.


metre:
If Europe buys sugar from Brazil it would be in 50 kg bags, and Brazil would happily oblige. Why would anyone outside America buy anything that finishes converted in idiotic metric numbers?

<<
Why would anyone outside America buy anything that finishes converted in idiotic metric numbers?
>>

I don't know why they would, but they do it all the time. You should travel to Commonwealth countries.

Bud wrote

<<
You should travel to Commonwealth countries
>>

Any Commonwealth countries that I have visited (other then the UK) are properly metric. (South Aferica, Lesotho, Botswana, Swaziland, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Mauritius)

metre was saying that people in other countries will not buy products in imperial measures, even if converted to soft metric. My point was that in commonwealth countries, even if they have converted to metric, people still understand many imperial measures and most will not refrain from buying something just because it is in imperial.

<<<Any Commonwealth countries that I have visited (other then the UK) are properly metric. (South Aferica, Lesotho, Botswana, Swaziland, Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), Mauritius)>>>

My version of that is exactly the opposite

Opposite? What do you mean by that?

Re: Edexcel Geography Paper: 60 lb Bags of Sugar June 14 2004, 6:46 AM


<<
Why would anyone outside America buy anything that finishes converted in idiotic metric numbers?
>>

I don't know why they would, but they do it all the time. You should travel to Commonwealth countries.

metre:
Some examples please. I have to clarify my answer somewhat. I meant industrialiased countries only. Everybody knows that 3rd World countries have neither the choice nor inclination to bother about things like this.

Whatever you meant, it doesn't really matter. I'll answer the question you posed above. People in other countries will buy things that are soft-converted into metric because measurement is not that big of a deal to them. So what if most flour in your country is sold in kilograms, you can buy a bag labelled in pounds and it would make no difference to you, if you even noticed.

<<<My version of that is exactly the opposite>>

I meant that all the commonwealth countries I have travelled to used imperial (or a mix).

Whcih ones have you travelled to?

Re: Edexcel Geography Paper: 60 lb Bags of Sugar June 15 2004, 7:33 AM


Whatever you meant, it doesn't really matter. I'll answer the question you posed above. People in other countries will buy things that are soft-converted into metric because measurement is not that big of a deal to them. So what if most flour in your country is sold in kilograms, you can buy a bag labelled in pounds and it would make no difference to you, if you even noticed.


metre:
Of ccourse it would matter. In Germany many people would think they buy 500 g pounds. Others would look at 453.6 g and think what the hell is that all about, I want 500 g. Sure monitors in inches dont bother them b/c their size is referred to as 17 or whatever without expressing units.

How stupid do you think people are? If someone knows how much 500 g weighs, they know how much 454 g weighs. It may seem unusual to them to see it, but why should that stop them from buying it?
By the way, how many people actually look at the quantity labelling on products before they buy? Probably not many. Most people just look at the package and get an idea of the size so they can evaluate the cost.

The carribean.

(Oh and non-england UK nations)

Re: Edexcel Geography Paper: 60 lb Bags of Sugar June 16 2004, 7:52 AM

Bud:
How stupid do you think people are? If someone knows how much 500 g weighs, they know how much 454 g weighs. It may seem unusual to them to see it, but why should that stop them from buying it?
By the way, how many people actually look at the quantity labelling on products before they buy? Probably not many. Most people just look at the package and get an idea of the size so they can evaluate the cost.

metre:
Sorry, I won't answer the first question.
Maybe 1000 people in Europe know how much an English pound weighs, so all others are forgiven to assume a lb is 500g. You be surprised how many women look at weights to find out whether 250 g tins, or packages of something are relatively cheaper than larger quantities. You would do well to observe women's shopping habits in supermarkets.

<<
Maybe 1000 people in Europe know how much an English pound weighs, so all others are forgiven to assume a lb is 500g.
>>
May I remind you that almost all packaging in the US is labeled in both English and metric? If it says "16 oz./454 g", it shouldn't cause a problem for anyone. I thought that the question was whether or not Europeans would be confused by things labelled in soft-converted metric "454 g", for example. You don't need to know anything about a pound in order to understand that.

Re: Edexcel Geography Paper: 60 lb Bags of Sugar June 17 2004, 5:55 AM


metre:
<<
Maybe 1000 people in Europe know how much an English pound weighs, so all others are forgiven to assume a lb is 500g.
>>

Bud:
May I remind you that almost all packaging in the US is labeled in both English and metric? If it says "16 oz./454 g", it shouldn't cause a problem for anyone. I thought that the question was whether or not Europeans would be confused by things labelled in soft-converted metric "454 g", for example. You don't need to know anything about a pound in order to understand that.

metre:
We started with sugar shipped in 60lb bags to America. As far as I know no metric eqivalent was given. No wholesaler in Europe would buy 60lb converted to metric. Nobody would take that odd quantity off him when they can get any amount in 50 kg bags that make sense.

<<
Nobody would take that odd quantity off him when they can get any amount in 50 kg bags that make sense.
>>

Hahaha. So people would be willing to pay extra so they can have the satisfaction of a round metric quantity?

Tony,

Regarding your statement of June 10th @ 4.26 p.m.

''I saw a geography paper that had a graph showing the no. of bags of sugar sold by Brazil over the past thirty yr. There were some supplementary questions on it. The graph showed how many 60# bags of sugar had been sold.''

Tony, can that paper be seen anywhere, because that's a weird weight, even a thousand miles up the amazon creek.

1 av.bu. = 64#
3 av. scorewt. = 63#
1 av. frail = 56#
1/4 h/k/g = 55 av.lb. 3 av.oz.

Info @

http://www.weights-and-measures.com

And topics:

old Avoirdupois Weight
New Avoirdupois Weight
Napoleon Emperor's Republic of Europe Decadent Weight

XCole

You have used the syumbol "#" a number of times in your last posting. What exactly do you mean by it?

Martin,

Check your kid's dictionary, or your kid's computer book.

The # sign is placed before a numeral, or after a numeral, and therefore has two completely different meanings.

#4608 means the number 4608

4608# means 4608 avoirdupois pounds

Info @

http://www.weights-and-measures.com

And topic:

Common Commercial Symbols & Abbreviations

Dear XCole,

Firstly, I do not recall ever having used the # symbol while at school (ie between the ages of 5 and 16). At the time South Africa used the Imperial system and pounds av. were always written "lb" (from the Latin libra).

I have checked my daughters "Chamber's Dictionary" (One of two commonly used dictionaries in Britain - the other is the Oxford Dictionary) and looked up the word "hash". It saud "The symbol #, used to mean: (1) number, eg apartment number (esp N Am); (2) space, eg in proofreading or marking up copy for printing.

Martin, it is an American thing. We use the hash for neither purpose in this country. In fact, to use it as a sign for pound is obscure even in the States. But then, coming from someone using the Nutty Napoleon Unusable units...

Bryan wrote

<<
Martin, it is an American thing
>>

I think that this demonstrates the power of consisent symbols for units of measure across the globe.

Martin,

I forgot to mention that in freshwater fishing the following style is used for weight.

2:15# = 2 av.lb. 15 av.oz.
7:01# = 7 av.lb. 1 av.oz.
16:08# = 16 av.lb. 8 av.oz.

I have never seen anything along the lines of:

255:15:23:19# = 255 av.lb. 15 av.oz. 23 av.scr. 19 aM

Well I suppose if degrees and hours can do it, then avoirdupois pounds can do it. It's just that there are so many avoirdupois units, compared to the degree units and hour units. Of course there are just as many United Kingdom currency units, but in an industrialized society where the majority of folks use money every day, it is completely understood which units are used and which units are not, for currency notation.

Still, it's notable that the above practice does not appear to have spread anywhere else. Everybody else uses decimal notation.

2.9375# = 2 av.lb. 15 av.oz.
7.0625# = 7 av.lb. 1 av.oz.
16.5000# = 16 av.lb. 8 av.oz.
255.9998697916666# = 255 av.lb. 15 av.oz. 23 av.scr. 19 aM

Info @

http://www.weights-and-measures.com

And topic:

old Avoirdupois Weight

P.S.
Martin,
Just read your note, my apologies to your daughter. The Town Library's Chambers dictionary published in Burgh of Edinburgh in 2000, just shows # as ''number''. So I guess the Europist Economic Community State Prosecutor campaign of terror is bearing fruit. All I can say is that the # for the av.lb. is shown in all United States dictionaries, and was shown in all United Kingdom dictionaries years ago. However Martin, all computer books all over the world, including the United Kingdom, say that the # is the ''pound sign''. You, Martin, clearly use a computer, and therefore should know that the # stands for ''pound'', even if you didn't know the # stands for ''avoirdupois pound''. No doubt the E.E.C. State Prosecutor will soon rip the # out of the computer in the furtherance of E.E.C. policy of sending the Britanic Islander populace back into the Stone Age.

United Kingdom currency units: Pound, penny.

Although... I DO like your notation for pounds and ounces (3lb 6oz is "3:06#")

XCOLE wrote

<<
However Martin, all computer books all over the world, including the United Kingdom, say that the # is the ''pound sign''
>>

Not correct.

In the 1970's each country had its own variant of the computer character set. There were 96 available characters. 84 of these charactes were the same in all countries and the remaining 12 were different depending on which country you were in. The UK and the US variants were identical apart form one character - "#" and "£". In the 1980's the ISO-8859 character set was introduced with 192 characters. The first 96 were the US variant of the older character set, while the remining 96 characters were assigned depending on which variant of ISO-8859 you were using. Variant ISO-8859-1 was used for Western Europe and included the "£", "ü","ç","ê","ß" and many other symbols. Variant ISO-8859-7 contains ASCII plus Greek characters and ISO-8859-5 ASCII plus Russian characters etc.

Thus, it is a myth to say that the "#" and the "£" sign are the same - they are not.

The # key is called the pound key. It is most often used in the US to denote the word 'number'. So #3542 would read number 3542. I cant say for how it was used decades ago, but this is how it is commonly used nowdays in the US.

Martin,

Regarding your statement of June 19th @ 6.41 p.m. about my statement about your previous statement, about my previous statement, and so forth.

''The assertion that all computer books all over the world, including the U.K., say that the # is the ''pound sign'', is not correct.''

Martin, I have checked and ''WH Smith'' is a chain of book stores in the United Kingdom. I have before me a book purchased in a ''WH Smith'' store. This book is part of the widest selling range of computer books on this Planet Earth.

HTML 4 for Dummies
Ed Tittel
Natanya Pitts
Chelsea Valentine
pub. by IDG Books Worldwide Inc. 2000
distributed by Transworld Publishers Ltd.
Random House Group Ltd.
20 Vauxhall Bridge Road
London SW1V 2SA

p.169
Numeric entities: Collections of numbers that represent characters. These are identified by a pound sign (#) that follows the ampersand. For example, &#60; and &#200; show a string of numbers (60 and 200) that stand for characters ''Less than'' and ''Capital E, grave accent''.

Martin, I'm not calling you a dummy, but wake up and smell the coffee.

Info @

http://www.weights-and-measures.com

And topic:

New Avoirdupois Weight

1937 Europist (Nationalist Socialist) Economic Community
EUROPIST ATOMIC COMMUNITY
1937 Europist (Nationalist Socialist) Economic Community
EUROPIST DEFENCE COMMUNITY
1937 Europist (Nationalist Socialist) Economic Community
EUROPIST ECONOMIC COMMUNITY
1937 Europist (Nationalist Socialist) Economic Community
EUROPIST POLITICAL COMMUNITY

Re: Edexcel Geography Paper: 60 lb Bags of Sugar June 18 2004, 7:00 PM


metre:
<<
Nobody would take that odd quantity off him when they can get any amount in 50 kg bags that make sense.
>>
Bud:
Hahaha. So people would be willing to pay extra so they can have the satisfaction of a round metric quantity?

metre:
Who talked about price? Sugar is 'unfortunately' dirt cheap everywhere. Selling it in 50 kg bags would beat 60 pound bags and the extra work plus cost anytime.

metre, your last statement has no substance in it.

In America, touchtone phones have a # key to the right of the zero, and it is referred to as the Pound Key. I have occasionally seen the # symbol refer to pounds on grocery store receipts. But other than that, it is not used for pounds very often.

Bud wrote

<<
In America, touchtone phones have a # key to the right of the zero, and it is referred to as the Pound Key. I have occasionally seen the # symbol refer to pounds on grocery store receipts. But other than that, it is not used for pounds very often.
>>

There is an identical key on British phones as well, but the symbol "#" is always known as the "hash symbol" - the "pound symbol" being written "£". (After all, would you refer to a "#" as a "dollar symbol"?)

Perhaps this is because if you try and print a '£' pound sign on some computers it comes out as an hash #

My posting of June 19 2004, 6:41 PM explains this

Re: Edexcel Geography Paper: 60 lb Bags of Sugar June 24 2004, 12:49 AM

Bud:
metre, your last statement has no substance in it.


metre;
50 kg against 60lb, To me and presumably everbody else, it's obvious where the SUBSTANCE is.

<<
50 kg against 60lb, To me and presumably everbody else, it's obvious where the SUBSTANCE is.
>>

In that case, would anybody else care to explain what he means?

...its like your petrol debate. Metric sugar tastes nicer than imperial suger.


(just incase he's trying to "prove" his 'metric knowedge' and 'catch you out' I might cover the fact for you that he might be implying that 50kg is almost double 60lb - so he might be trying to "catch you out" in a bizzare relation to "value for money" - something no-one has brought up but might make him "look clever")

(btw - notice how he is learning! he now puts the mandatory [space] between metric amount and metric unit! He must spend ages studying his posts before posting them just to appear 'really metric'!! Check his older posts!)

SteveH wrote

<<
Metric sugar tastes nicer than imperial suger.
>>

When metric sugar was first introduced, it *did* taste nicer than imoperial sugar - in Autumn 1974 one of the newspapers ran a scare story about a sugar shortage, so every housewife rushed out and in next to no time, there was no sugar on the shelves.

The shops then imported Zuiker, Sucker, Sucre etc from the Continent (all in metric bags) so you had the choice of metric sugar or nothing. In such circumstances metric sugar tasted a lot better.

PS - Once the crisis was over, metrication of the sugar industry was implemented immeadiately since the public had got used to buying 1kg bags of sugar.

So let me see if I have got this correct.

Granules of sucrose surrounded by a bag with the letters "k" and "g" or just "g" on it would taste better than granules of sucrose surrounded by a bag with the letters "lb" on them?

Is this the basis for all reasons why metric is better than imperial?

No Steve,

If you reread my last pasting, you will see that when sugar was introduced in bags with "kg" written on the bags, there were no bags around with "lbs" written on them.

If we use the SQL meaning of the NUL value, we will see that packets with "lbs" on them will be ignored since they are not present (the normal way in which SQL operates).

PS - Anybody who does not work with databases should ignore this post - you might not understand it.

No bags ever came withg "lb" on them? Are you sure? I've heard a lot of references to pound bags of sugar.

BTW - null means nothing in Oracle (SQL) other databases may use null to mean "no amount" (as in "zero")

SteveH wrote

<<
No bags ever came withg "lb" on them? Are you sure? I've heard a lot of references to pound bags of sugar.
>>

In October 1974 there was a general sugar shortage in Britain - that is the period to which I am referring. I know because that is when I arrived from South Africa to do a post-grad course at UMIST and at the time I was unable to buy any sugar.

Peculiar fact:

my girlfriend is one of the most continental and metricated people that I know. She was tellign me about a cuddly toy she used to own, and estimated it as forty centimetres. However, SHE, on a number of occassions, has referred to pound bags of sugar... in a contemporary context!!! (e.g. "Just been to the shops to buy a pound bag of sugar"). Strange. And no, she doesn't use the word "pound" to mean "half-a-Kilogramme", but to mean the sense we all mean- 16 ounces.

re (Bryan Parry): "...my girlfriend is one of the most..."

REPLY: Bryan, may I advise a degree of caution. SteveH started mentioning his girlfriend on this bulletin board and, before very long, he found himself engaged to her

<<
BTW - null means nothing in Oracle (SQL) other databases may use null to mean "no amount" (as in "zero")
>>

The term null in database speak usually means no data or a blank entry. That's not the same as zero in a numeric field.

Re: Edexcel Geography Paper: 60 lb Bags of Sugar June 25 2004, 9:38 AM


metre:
<<
50 kg against 60lb, To me and presumably everbody else, it's obvious where the SUBSTANCE is.
>>

In that case, would anybody else care to explain what he means?

metre:
Your steadfast admirer latched on to it. Isn't life a bitch.

<<<REPLY: Bryan, may I advise a degree of caution. SteveH started mentioning his girlfriend on this bulletin board and, before very long, he found himself engaged to her>>>

I speedily answer that I did not meet her here!
P.S. The stag do is soon! (oh dear)

<<<The term null in database speak usually means no data or a blank entry. That's not the same as zero in a numeric field.>>>

Indeed - this is how Oracle works. It's not a garauntee of how all db's work though.

eg, in Oracle:-

select * from booze where pints_of_bear > -9999999;

will not display rows pertaining to those where pints_of_beer is null - essentially the point that you make.

NERD ALERT!

lol, nice one Ton ;)

Tony.. damn I wish we could edit posts :(

Bryan - you were simply showing your preference for the "ton" over the "tonne".

Indeed. Nice one, ton.

Erm...

select * from booze where pints_of_bear > -9999999

ERROR at line 1:
ORA-00904: invalid column name

No-one noticed the mistake

NERD ALERT! NERD ALERT! NERD ALERT! NERD ALERT! NERD ALERT! NERD ALERT! NERD ALERT!