John Bange wrote:

>The other thing about most people's mundane lives is that we don't generally
>deal with  things that vary by orders of magnitude. Physics calculations,
>sure. Dividing 16 feet into three equal bits, not so much. It's much quicker
>to get to 5'4" from 16' than it is to get to 166cm from 5m. It's just the
>way the systems are constructed. Decimal systems like metric are optimized
>for science and engineering, but feet and inches are optimized for figuring
>out if two chairs and a sofa will fit against the wall.
>
>--
>John Bange
>'90 Vanagon - "Geldsauger"
>
>
>
Even tho you seem to have chosen an example that happens to come out to
a whole number of inches, it is still a more complex process than simply
dividing 500 by 3.
  How about doubling:  2' 9 5/8"  vs. doubling 85.4 cm ?
Or find the area of squares with edges of those sizes?
The metric version is very easily done with a calculator.

Larry A.