lbs or kilos?

Answer 1

Lbs

Answer 2

Kilos make more sense in scientific contexts and for extensive numerical manipulation, but they are not more intuitive or inherently superior to imperial measures such as the pound.

The pound has certain advantanges over the kilogram in some contexts. The human mind does not cope well with visualing very large or very small numbers (when expressed as decimals or fractions), but is very good when visualising things in twos and threes and fours. Beyond that, you tend to have to partition things into groups or count them explicitly. Try visualising three or four peas, then try visualing seven. For seven, you normally have to imagine four plus three objects.

The great thing about the pound is that, being sixteen ounces, it can be halved, then halved again, then halved again, and again, and still be a whole number. When measuring things out in the kitchen, say, halving and doubling and quartering is what we commonly do when following recipes and measuring weights. So numbers like 16, 8, 4, 2, 1 are very easy to handle. Great for cookery.

Doing this with grams and kilograms quickly results in awkward numbers and decimal fractions. '125' is not an easy number to visualise or do arithmetic on, but '4' is. And with ounces, one can go down still further in halving and quartering, since there are 16 drams in an ounce. When I'm cooking or baking, I always use imperial measures, they're just so much easier.

There is another issue with grams and kilograms, associated with implied precision. When a number is written, there is often an implied precision, which is usually (plus or minus) half of the least significant digit. So 6 ounces would be generally somewhere between five and a half, and six and a half, depending on context. However, 180 grams is notionally precise to half a gram, which in practice is meaningless. However, very often one sees recipes with both imperial and metric measures, where it's obvious that the imperial original has been directly converted to the metric equivalent, with a resulting absurd level of precision; it's not unsusual, for example, to see a recipe calling for '62 grams butter'.

(Incidentally, on a slight tangent, the plural form of 'lb' is not 'lbs', it is still 'lb'. This is because 'lb' is a contraction of 'libra', the old Latin word for a pound (libra pondo), and its plural is 'librae', so the contraction is still 'lb'. The same applies to the abbreviation 'oz' for ounce and ounces.)

Answer 3

lbs are easier to estimate if you have grown up with them younger people that have grown up with kilos have problems when older people talk in lbs I think it will take some time for us all to come round to kilos

Answer 4

Try with kilos. Then you can descibe weights and be understood by the most of the world. Kilos is based on the decadic system. gram, hektogram,kilogram etc is simple to handle in calculation. And there is decigram, centigram,milligram ..... etc when you shal cope with small units.

Answer 5

i still use lbs the majority of the time, but i am trying to use kilo's more. this due to the social climate.

Answer 6

Lbs. I dont do kilos, or kilometres. Dammit Ive only just got used to decimal currency

Answer 7

Kilo. You cant beat Metric for accuracy

Answer 8

Kilos. They are more intuitive, make maths easier and are part of a consistent system.

Answer 9

If you are outside the U.S. or doing any kind of scientific study or research, you should use the metric system (grams, meters). If you are in the U.S. and not doing scientific research, the use of pounds, feet, miles, etc., is perfectly acceptable.

Plus you can always convert.

Answer 10

kilos!is used more in the world than pounds.....