Date format - where is the logic?

I live in the UK, so am used to the date format used by almost everyone except America.



Taking a step back from any patriotism, I just don't get the American date format. Really don't get it!



It makes no sense to muddle up the order of the significance of the elements. If you were specifying a time of day you would not use MM:SS:HH, that would be crazy and no one would understand what you meant, so why does America use MM DD YY for dates???



As I work with computer files I always name these using a decreasing order of significance, so typically use YYYYMMDD_HHMMSS which logically orders the files by name according to their assigned date. This seems logical to me.



Whether you start with the least significant element (such as with a postal address) or the most significant element such as in the standard date format described in ISO 8601 the most important part is to to keep the order of significance of the elements from highest to lowest (big-endian) or lowest to highest (little-endian).



Doesn't it make sense for America to join in with the rest of the world? Like any change to comply with other nations there would be some changes required, but decimalisation or adopting the euro are similarly big changes made by other countries.

I agree. I have a hard time with this since I live in the US but I'm a foreigner.

subwoofer said:

I live in the UK, so am used to the date format used by almost everyone except America.

Taking a step back from any patriotism, I just don't get the American date format. Really don't get it!

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I'm a native of the USA, but I'm with you - YYYY-MM-DD makes enormously more sense than the format commonly used here. Unfortunately, that virtually assures that people here will cling to it ferociously, like they do this ridiculous system of measurment vs. metric.

Sad when the chronological order and metric including celsius are SOO much easier

I ask people how many fluid ounces to a gallon and 95% can't tell me

I have just recently had to change how I record the date on my work records because of this, no more writing 03, now its MARCH. Just encase there is a problem when in America.

Me too. I just tell them july and the date and let them figure it out

I also agree that our method defies logic. Too bad Reagan reversed President Carter's legislation to convert us to the metric system. 15/64th anyone?

Considering how poorly so many of us drive* and vote, logic doesn't seem to be a widespread quality of our masses.

*If one can describe it as really driving.

Don't feel bad. I've lived in four countries and trust me, dumba$$es are everywhere but yes, I do agree with you 100% on that one.

I can't be sure of course, but I think it has something to do with moving from spoken to written words. When someone asks "what's today's date??" or "when did suchandsuch happen??" one says "March 29th, 2011" . The written format matches this, though I agree it is confusing sometimes.

You might be right but like here, when someone tells you a time, they specify if it's am or pm. Most of the time, it IS understood if it's afternoon or morning which is how we get away with only saying, I'll see you at 7 in the rest of the world without specifying am or pm.

See you at the movies at 7

Yoda4561 said:

I can't be sure of course, but I think it has something to do with moving from spoken to written words. When someone asks "what's today's date??" or "when did suchandsuch happen??" one says "March 29th, 2011" . The written format matches this, though I agree it is confusing sometimes.

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I think that plays both ways. If someone were to ask me when something happened, I'd say the "29th of March, 2011" The way it's spoken is a product of the way it's written which is a product of the way it's spoken.

Ya, I agree with you. Why can't everyone just stick with one or two formats?
Being a Filipino. Our country wants to be "American" (Believe me, even public urinals are too high and we aren't as tall as Americans :shakehead) so I grew up with and am used MM/DD/YY. But there are also times when some people (especially organizations and companies like schools, etc.) use DD/MM/YY. I tried asking around, and people can't decide which is actually "right". It's okay if the day is above 12 then you don't have to worry about which is which but if its not then good luck:thumbsup:. Now, I resolved to write Dec 21, 2012 to avoid confusion.

Hear, hear..

Then there are the ambiguous formats and fonts. Is it really safe to eat a Twinkie with and expiration date of Dec 2 2 1 1 ? I prefer food that has a shelf life of less than 200 years.

But I have to agree that ANY single standard is better than any mix of standards. When is/was 12/11/10 ? Dec 11 of 2010 or Nov 10 of 2012 or .... It will be a little easier starting in 2013.

I prefer to use yyyy-mm-dd simply because I can do time arithmetic with it.

Daniel

i really struggle with it sometimes. is it 09 04 11 or 04 09 11. or 11 04 09 crap. just round to the nearest year. you know what i dont care. the suns shining,later itll be dark i can light up me lights.

but give me feet inches and miles over centimetres any day. when you do some carpentry you really appreciate the value of 1/16th or a 1/32nd of an inch. lets see how tall are you 5 foot 9 i visualise that pretty good. on the other hand 187.5 centremetres . i cant do it.

beerwax said:

i really struggle with it sometimes. is it 09 04 11 or 04 09 11. or 11 04 09 crap. just round to the nearest year. you know what i dont care. the suns shining,later itll be dark i can light up me lights.

but give me feet inches and miles over centimetres any day. when you do some carpentry you really appreciate the value of 1/16th or a 1/32nd of an inch. lets see how tall are you 5 foot 9 i visualise that pretty good. on the other hand 187.5 centremetres . i cant do it.

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Oh yeah, baby, unit wars!

The first problem with metric is that the base unit for length sucks. Virtually nothing that humans interact with is naturally described as a single-digit number of meters. Many things are single-digit inches, or single-digit feet. But meters are too big, centimeters are too small, and decimeters are an awkward in-between. It would have been better to adopt the inch as the base unit and define a "metric foot" as 10 inches, similar to how the "metric ton" reused the name "ton" to describe a roughly similar weight. Every guy who was five-foot-something would have instantly become six-foot-something, so it would have been adopted much faster -- even here.

Metric temperature is even worse. The Fahrenheit scale fits human needs: a forecast of "in the 70s" is meaningful, whereas "in the 20s" (Celsius) translates roughly as "Class M planet".

The liter is a pretty good unit, but only because -- purely by chance -- it's about a quart.

More broadly, the metric system is based on a flawed premise: that if only everything were powers of 10, measurement would be simpler. In reality, to compute (say) volume one still has to multiply three random floating-point numbers -- the units make no difference. If anything, metric makes it much easier to mess up the decimal point and be wrong by 10x.

The choice of metric base units borders on misanthropic. One gets the sense that the units were chosen almost deliberately to be of no relevance to ordinary humans going about their daily lives.

So go ahead, rest of planet, try to make us use your stinking meters. We won't give an inch.

flashflood said:

Oh yeah, baby, unit wars!

The first problem with metric is that the base unit for length sucks. Virtually nothing that humans interact with is naturally described as a single-digit number of meters. Many things are single-digit inches, or single-digit feet. But meters are too big, centimeters are too small, and decimeters are an awkward in-between.

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You do realize this (and pretty much all your arguments) are due to you being used to your Imperial system, right? To me, it's the exact opposite.

flashflood said:

The choice of metric base units borders on misanthropic. One gets the sense that the units were chosen almost deliberately to be of no relevance to ordinary humans going about their daily lives.

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Or, you know, that they were actually used in the daily life all over Europe before it was standardized. :duh2:

flashflood said:

So go ahead, rest of planet, try to make us use your stinking meters. We won't give an inch.

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Have fun. We're fine as it is. Your manufacturing base is switching (most has switched already, like the auto industry), so I don't have to deal with ridiculous inch tools when working on Caterpillars any more. Fine by me. :nana:

flashflood said:

Oh yeah, baby, unit wars!

The first problem with metric is that the base unit for length sucks. Virtually nothing that humans interact with is naturally described as a single-digit number of meters. Many things are single-digit inches, or single-digit feet. But meters are too big, centimeters are too small, and decimeters are an awkward in-between.

Click to expand...

I find no requirement for a single digit measurement. I think of everything in millimeters.

The playground I just built, for example, is 2800x3600mm. Nice and accurate.

It's fractions that are the real killer when you're measuring something.

I always find it amusing when people claim that things they have grown up with are the best, I.e. I grew up in Kuwait, it's the best nation ever, or my dad drives a Chevy, they are always the best cars.

The Imperial system is fine for every day uses in a non technical settings.

But when performing allot of calculations, with different units of measurement, I really find it hard to say anything good about the imperial system.

Having everything to the powers of ten is just easier to work with than fractions of 4,8,16,32.

Within the same units you can easily add and subtract nearly anything you want, it's to easy, not ambiguous, misanthropic or easily confused.

I am a metric man, but my father was imperial, so I have experienced both, apart from the one argument of familiarity, which is a personal problem and nothing else. Metric is just so much easier when doing anything more than asking for a spanner.


Check this,
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Omh8Ito-05M

Slightly off topic, I could never understand how the U.S.A. uses a variation of the imperial system, which has some differences to the imperial system once used in Australia and Great Britain.
As someone who was educated when the imperial system was still in use and had to adapt to metrics well after leaving school, I would never want to go back.

It also seems strange to me that our American friends have been using metric currency far longer than we have but they aren't keen go totally metric.

Norm