Why is the American date format different?

[Famine]

When I was at school, we measured things in mm, cm, etc, but I have no idea how that equates to my height. I'm 6'3". No idea what that is in metres. All I know is that it's under 2, and now I know it's higher than 1.78

But us Brits are weird anyway. We fill up our cars in litres, but measure fuel consumption in miles per gallon.

And our gallon is different too. Or rather the US gallon is.


We also have a peculiar tendency to measure cold weather in Celsius/Centigrade and warm weather in Farenheit.

And there's one physical parameter which is never measured in centimetres, only inches.

 

[Blake]

We also have a peculiar tendency to measure cold weather in Celsius/Centigrade and warm weather in Farenheit.

*head explodes*


Whaaaaaaaaat!? What is wrong with you people?

 

[Famine]

*head explodes*

Whaaaaaaaaat!? What is wrong with you people?

Weather people always display it in Celsius - you won't find a Farenheit forecast anywhere. But people will say "it's -4!" and "it's over 90!" - rather than -4 and 32 or 90 and -20.

 

[Pupik]

And yet you celebrate "the fourth of July"...

We felt honest enough to warn thee that we had had enough of your tyranny, but we also thought it would be fair not to confuse you.

I'm going to start my own format: Month-year/day. It's ISO8999-compliant.

 

[Wenders]

edit: @Daan: So your height is 1,9m (actually 190,4cm, but who cares about 4mm when you're talking about the height of a person)

When you are 151.13cm tall every millimetre counts.

 

[DustDriver]

I don't even know what my height or weight is. And as long as I feel healthy i don't care

 

[wfooshee]

We also have a peculiar tendency to measure cold weather in Celsius/Centigrade and warm weather in Farenheit.

Another example of using a scale with bigger numbers to measure something. 3C is so much colder than 39F, right? And 102F is so much hotter than 31C.

And there's one physical parameter which is never measured in centimetres, only inches.

And yet. . .

 

[Dave A]

And there's one physical parameter which is never measured in centimetres, only inches.

Which would be rain.

Famine is right, the UK is an oddity for measurments, fortunately I can use different measurements pretty easilly. I can work out speed in Mph and Kph, I can convert centimeters to inches and feet to meters. I'd say that there's more to learn wit hthe way the UK measures things these days, we've kind of ended up on the fence in many ways. But I still cannot understand any logic behind the US date format of Mm/Dd/Yy.

 

[Flerbizky]

But us Brits are weird anyway. We fill up our cars in litres, but measure fuel consumption in miles per gallon.

w0rd.. Seriously w0rd !... Nicely put...

 

[Kylehnat]

But I still cannot understand any logic behind the US date format of Mm/Dd/Yy.

That's because there is none. There is also no real logic behind DD/MM/YYYY. Both are arbitrary. It'd be nice if we could all get on the same page, but there is no need for either to change since both systems work just fine.

And ours is better.

 

[Dave A]

There is logic behind DD/MM/YY, the logic is to follow a pattern and use the lowest unit first and move up to the highest. MM/DD/YY is middle unit, lowest unit then highest unit, which makes no sense. I totally agree with Pako's first post though. Both systems don't work fine together though, for example 01/03/07 means two totally different dates but reads exactley the same either way.