August 18, 2016

You Can’t Handle the Truth

I find the NBC coverage of the long jump at the Rio Olympics frustrating. The landing area is clearly marked off in meters, but the announcers report distances in feet and inches. I can estimate the length of a jump in meters by simply watching, but I have to engage in mental gymnastics to make sense of a reported jump of, say, 23 feet, 5½ inches. Reporting 7.15 meters would make more sense and make the results more intelligible.

Does NBC really believe that Americans as so wedded to the English system of measurement that they can’t be trusted with lengths measured in meters, which, after all, are so much easier to compare with one another?
Olympic Rings

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