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conuly
No doubt she'll have to do so again this year, because instead of teaching anything straight out in math, in the US we tend to "spiral" and teach ever advancing versions of the same concepts year after year. I've read that this is an inefficient method of teaching math, but I only read it once.
The stated goal of Ana's homework on measurements last year was, repeatedly, basically to learn that standard measurements are "better" than measuring through nonstandard units like thumb-widths or human feet... which of course were in many ways the origins of our standard units today, unless you use metric. This annoyed me at the time, because it made no acknowledgment of the fact that, actually, nonstandard units are, in some ways, superior to standard ones. We're so used to our standardized world that we don't think that way, but I can think of one easy advantage to measuring by hand and thumb instead of by inches - if you're counting out five thumbs of space on your fabric, or two handfuls of pepper in your peppergrinder, or three paces to bury the body, you NEVER have to resort to tools to figure out if you have the right amount. Instead, all the tools you need are right here on your own body. There are definitely disadvantages to this system, sure, but that doesn't mean that the standardized systems are the best. They each have their pluses and minuses, whatever the homework might state.
Which leads me to Wikipedia, and to shoe sizes. Listen!
barleycorn
Basic Anglo-Saxon unit, the length of a corn of barley. The unit survived after 1066, as the base unit from which the inch was nominally defined. 3 barleycorns comprising 1 inch was the legal definition of the inch in many mediæval laws, both of England and Wales, from the 10th century Laws of Hywel Dda to the 1324 definition of the inch enacted by Edward II. Note the relation to the grain unit of weight. This archaic measure is still the basis for current UK and U.S. shoe sizes, with the largest shoe size taken as thirteen inches (a size 13) and then counting backwards in barleycorn units,[4] although the original derivation was: less than 13 barleycorns: infants with no shoes; 13 to 26 barleycorns: children's sizes 1 to 12; 26 to 39 barleycorns: men's sizes 1 to 13.
Yes, you heard it here first. WHY are shoe sizes so weird? Because, unlike anything else on this good green earth, they're based upon a unit that's a third of an inch. Sheesh.
(And listen, while we're on the subject. For all the easy math of the metric system, I've always had a real fondness for our system and all its halves and doubles.)
The stated goal of Ana's homework on measurements last year was, repeatedly, basically to learn that standard measurements are "better" than measuring through nonstandard units like thumb-widths or human feet... which of course were in many ways the origins of our standard units today, unless you use metric. This annoyed me at the time, because it made no acknowledgment of the fact that, actually, nonstandard units are, in some ways, superior to standard ones. We're so used to our standardized world that we don't think that way, but I can think of one easy advantage to measuring by hand and thumb instead of by inches - if you're counting out five thumbs of space on your fabric, or two handfuls of pepper in your peppergrinder, or three paces to bury the body, you NEVER have to resort to tools to figure out if you have the right amount. Instead, all the tools you need are right here on your own body. There are definitely disadvantages to this system, sure, but that doesn't mean that the standardized systems are the best. They each have their pluses and minuses, whatever the homework might state.
Which leads me to Wikipedia, and to shoe sizes. Listen!
barleycorn
Basic Anglo-Saxon unit, the length of a corn of barley. The unit survived after 1066, as the base unit from which the inch was nominally defined. 3 barleycorns comprising 1 inch was the legal definition of the inch in many mediæval laws, both of England and Wales, from the 10th century Laws of Hywel Dda to the 1324 definition of the inch enacted by Edward II. Note the relation to the grain unit of weight. This archaic measure is still the basis for current UK and U.S. shoe sizes, with the largest shoe size taken as thirteen inches (a size 13) and then counting backwards in barleycorn units,[4] although the original derivation was: less than 13 barleycorns: infants with no shoes; 13 to 26 barleycorns: children's sizes 1 to 12; 26 to 39 barleycorns: men's sizes 1 to 13.
Yes, you heard it here first. WHY are shoe sizes so weird? Because, unlike anything else on this good green earth, they're based upon a unit that's a third of an inch. Sheesh.
(And listen, while we're on the subject. For all the easy math of the metric system, I've always had a real fondness for our system and all its halves and doubles.)
