The pro-metric lobby loves quote misleading statistics like '94% of the world uses metric'.

Perhaps they should consider the following rather more representative statistics:

The overwhelming majority of consumers in the G7 countries use non-metric measures (Imperial/American) for the majority of their commercial and non-commercial activities.

Taking the UK, the USA and Canada together nearly 400 million of the worlds richest consumers use Imperial/American in preference to metric.

In terms of world GDP around half is accounted for by countries that are predominantly non-metric.

The majority of the world's transportation is conducted in imperial measures (shipping is conducted exclusively in nautical miles; aviation almost exclusively in nautical miles & statute miles (& feet for altitude), road transport in a combination of miles and kilometres (distance) but exclusively in imperial for containers (20 foot or 40 foot containers).

Not only that:

The world's IT industry uses imperial measures almost exclusively

The world's recorded media industry uses predominantly imperial measures

Precious metals are traded globally almost exclusively in troy ounces.

The enormous oil industry trades globally in barrels and US gallons rather than metric units.

Quote:

"The overwhelming majority of consumers in the G7 countries use non-metric measures (Imperial/American) for the majority of their commercial and non-commercial activities."

I take it you mean the USA and the UK?

To say "the overwhelming majority of consumers in the G7 countries use non-metric measures", is with respect just plain nonsense. How about the rest of the G7, then, like Italy, Germany, France and Japan?

I take it you have a rather 'American' view of the world?

The sums speak for themselves:

USA + Canada + UK > France + Italy + Germany + Japan

However the point you make is valid: I will gladly withdraw the phrase 'overwhelming majority' and replace it by 'majority'.

I don't have either an 'American' view of the world, or a Eurocentric one. Simply global!

In fact I was educated entirely in the metric system.

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The enormous oil industry trades globally in barrels and US gallons rather than metric units
>>

and one of the most ridiculous measurements in teh oil industry is to measure the oil content of an oil reservoir in barrels per acre-foot. If this is conveted to any rational system of units, one ends up with a dimensionless fraction (which could be expressed as a percetage).

Furthermore, various equations used by engineers in the oil industry have large constants in them to compensate for the fact that they are using an idiotic set of units. FOr example the FOrscheimer Equation is giv en by:

-dp/dL = mu*v/K +3.238*10^-8*beta*rho*v^2

(where p, L, mu, v, K, beta and rho have their normal meanings).

The number 3.238*10^-8 is included for dimensional consistency. Had SI been used, the equation would have remained th esame except that the factor 3.238*10-8 would have been replaced by unity.

I often wonder whether extraction rates ought to be expressed in units of 'cubic furlongs per fortnight'. Okay, maybe not, but it does have a rather nice alliteration!