I am probably influenced by being British because we use a mix of imperial and metric. We use miles but generally use metres (or yards) instead of feet for shorter horizontal distances. At least I do. We usually use feet for elevations though (which is why the app has a feet/metres option for vertical distances).
Most sports seem to use metres (athletics, swimming, rowing etc). I get the occasional request from the US for distances in yards (especially for swimming in pools measured in yards) but feet is rarely requested for horizontal distances.
One day I will rework the units used by the app to support both feet and yards, and also nautical miles for sailing. This will also include different units for speed, such as knots for sailing, pace per 500m for rowing etc. However this would be a fair amount of work and other features are currently much more requested, so it isn't high on my to-do list at the moment. Sorry about that.
Units in the States are a complete disaster.
Officially, metrification is complete.
In practice … you buy milk by the quart, cream by the pint, and soda by the liter. You car’s speedometer shows MPH (sometimes, but not always with smaller print for km/h) but the fasteners are likely all metric. But, depending on the manufacturer, they could still be “standard” (fractional inches).
I’m not a competitive athlete, so I wouldn’t want to imply that what follows is what such people care about. But, growing up, all the sprints were measured in yards (e.g., “hundred-yard dash”); today, I mostly only see meters. Pool lengths are more likely to be measured in yards than meters. Diving platforms used to be given in feet; now I only think I see meters. Pool depths are always marked in feet. Elevations are always feet. (Even internationally, one “flight level” is equivalent to 1000 feet, with caveats about barometric conditions … with such conditions given in either inches or millimeters of mercury. And airspeed is still knots! But ground speed is MPH — argh!)
Measurements are important in American football, always given in yards and feet. If less than a foot, unspecified “inches” are used; for example, “fourth and inches” means a last chance to move the ball forward anywhere from a finger’s width to a mere mortal’s shoe length.
Baseball measures pitch speed in MPH. The infield diamond is standardized (in feet and inches), but each park’s outfield has different dimensions; I only remember seeing those measured in feet, not yards.
I would expect soccer to be entirely metric, even at the elementary school level.
Top-fuel drag racing used to be 1/4 mile, but the cars got so fast as to make such a “long” distance dangerous. Now they race 1000 feet. (A quarter of a mile is 1320 feet, so they shortened the strip by almost 100 meters, or a bit more than the length of a football field. But they only shortened the time by half a second in doing so!)
If you’re describing your suburban home, you’ll give the area of the lot in acres but the width and breadth in feet, never yards.
And … every lab everywhere is 100% metric. If they report non-metric figures, it’s a conversion done at the very end.
You’re right to make this a low priority, I think. If you do decide to expand it … I think I’d recommend having everything internal be metric. Then have a table that gives conversion factors for all convertible units, and let the user pick whatever they want for the display. If somebody really wants their cycling pace in smoots per fortnight, let them have it.
Presumably, this would be no small task …
b&
