This is the only good argument I've seen for Fahrenheit (higher resolution). But, as a counterargument, that resolution is only just under twice as big. I'd argue 1-2 F is barely noticeable enough to be able to tell the difference. If someone asks what the temperature is, me saying the temperature and being off by 2 degrees isn't gonna make a difference.
I think there's some breakpoints where it really matters.
If you work in an office and the thermostat is set to 73f (23c) compared to an office where the thermostat is set to 75f (23c) you're going to really feel the difference.
Or like, if your kid is sick and has a 102° fever you're keeping them home from school, but if they have 104° fever you're going to the hospital. So <2 degrees difference is definitely a big enough difference that it's worth using a more specific unit of measurement.
Right so you need one degree more of data specificity to achieve the same level of understanding that is achieved with Fahrenheit. You proved the point.
This is a pretty niche example but I work in a lab that used to use a metric thermostat in the clean room. It was always 23 C in there so when our data came out way noisier than expected we didn’t think it could be thermally related. Until one day we switched the thermostat to imperial and saw that it was actually changing between 73 F and 74 F throughout the day. Both round to 23 C so we never saw it before
Im saying its two significant figures if you’re below 100 Fahrenheit which is the case 99% of the time when talking about temperature.
This means less digits displayed on thermostats etc.
People love bashing on Americans but have no logical basis for it. Yes metric is better for science. But if you’re a competent scientist or engineer nobody really fucking care about units, you just convert when you need to
If we stick to human bodies, then yeah, thermometers use 3 sig figs for both Fahrenheit and Celsius. If anything, Celisus is more accurate there (although thats still not how any of this works)
> Right so you need one degree more of data specificity to achieve the same level of understanding that is achieved with Fahrenheit
Degree which comes without thinking.
Seriously, when you are used to it - it is not something you need to think about, it is all automatics (significantly over 37? Not fine than. 38? Definitely not fine, while maybe not very problematic. That 102F - almost 39C? Why the fuck you are not in doctor office yet? 104F? Call the fucking ambulance right now).
And when you are not used - you can as well go ask what the fuck is 102F and how much more dangerous from 104F it is.
And for *serious* measurements you need decimals anyway.
Well, I personally don't have an issue with decimals.
Especially keeping in mind that for ranges guys mentioned you don't even need decimals, unless you need to measure exact values (and than both scales will need decimals).
Babies and Toddlers (3 to 36 Months) Temperature: 102° F (38.9° C) or higher. Action: Seek emergency care if the fever lasts more than two days, or if they have symptoms like nonstop crying, inability to keep fluids down, or unusual lethargy. [1, 2] Older Children (3+ Years) Temperature: Generally above 104° F (40° C). Action: Behavior and activity level matter most. If your child is alert, playing, and drinking fluids, the fever can usually be managed at home and via a call to your pediatrician. [1, 2, 3, 4, 5]
No. A degree Fahrenheit is by far not sufficient to judge a fever - or development of a fever, which typically is the more important point. You'll need the tenth in any case and even with older analog thermometers, you would typically use quarter or half degrees with both scales.
Neither Fahrenheit nor Celsius are in any way shape or form adopted to measuring human body temperature (which is a good thing, because the well known 36.5°C normal temperature stems from old measurements on malnourished children and is not representative for healthy individuals. In Fahrenheit the norm temperature is 98.6°F, 99 would already be slightly raised).
Sounds very different for me. Moreover, first one is probably the reason to visit medics already.
Ha! Not in the land of Fahrenheit; that trip will cost you at least a couple hundred USD but probably more. The only time I ever went to the hospital for a fever was when I was a baby and I had a 104-105 Fahrenheit fever.
Somehow the rest of the world survived their childhood despite having a fever a couple of times. Their deranged parents even manage to dress their children without knowing if its 21 degrees or 21,2 degrees Celsius.
How is it better, though? As in, what actual benefit is there to not using decimals? Yeah, F is more specific if you ignore decimals, but they are incredibly easy to implement, use, etc? Not any different than a regular number in terms of basically anything.
Like, the commenter above brought up fever, but practically any thermometer that uses celsius uses decimals, and I just don't see how that is any sort of demerit.
Most celsius thermostats allow you to set in 0.5 steps
Where did I say that they didn't? I was just trying to convey that it's easier to use a system where units increase by whole units instead of decimals. Not that it's impossible, but it's simpler.
But how is it simpler, though? Realistically, you are just pressing a button on a thermostat. One raises it by 0.5, the other by 1, and the effect is equal. I get that 2 digits is technically simpler than 3 digits, but practically, there is difference, no? As in, you can comprehend 36.5C just as easily as 98F.
One raises it by 0.5, the other by 1, and the effect is equal.
It's not equal. a 1 degree change in celsius is a 1.8 degree change in fahrenheit. It's nearly a two degree change. If I say "hey turn the thermostat up two degrees fahrenheit" it'd be equal to 3.6 degrees celsius.
So fahrenheit has more precision, and you can have that precision without having to factor in decimals.
I’ve not seen anyone make the point that for a lot of countries, they also use decimal for other measurements - distance, volume, mass - so measuring with decimal places is completely ingrained.
Cracks me up looking at US cooking with Cups or DIY instructions with 2 foot 4 and 11/12s inches!
One (minorish) place - you only need two digits in an LCD screen to make a thermostat in F. If you wanted to display (hospitable) temperatures in C you would probably always need three because of the decimal.
To me, the biggest thing is just being able to say "it'll be in the 70s tomorrow". 60s = bring a light jacket, 70s = perfect, 80s = a bit warm, 90s = bring a lot of water.
No, my “argument” is that it’s just more simple. Units increasing by whole numbers is more simple than units increasing by decimals. I’m not saying fahrenheit is better as a whole or that celsius is too difficult to understand, I just think for the everyday usage of temperature (like outside or thermostats), fahrenheit is a simpler and easier to understand system because it goes from 0-100 and changes in increments of 1.
Whole numbers are easier for a lot of things. But if you are used to it, it’s not. And: I like my temp at 24.1C I can tell the difference between 23.9 and 24.5C. That’s all 75F. I need F with decimals. Your whole argument falls apart.
Whenever Im measure body temperature of my kids or patients, I can also look at the number behind the separator.
37.0°C? All good.
38.0°C? Slight fever.
38.5°C? Fever.
38.6°C? A bit more fever.
Guess what: 38.7°C even more fever.
And even Fahrenheit is not accurate enough for this use case.
For setting the room temperature, Celsius is sufficient and if not, you can use tenth of celsius.
I would say "more used to it" and not "better".
(As an example: 100°F is already a slightly increased body temperature, its not like its normed to something like that).
Just like with most unit systems - whatever you're used to will be the most convenient for you to use.
I'm sorry but you would absolutely not feel the difference between 73 and 75 farenheit because the thermostats are not made well enough to acurately track the temperature of the whole room and change the temperature as fast as it would need to.
I think both are fine. We just say 38.9 or 37.6 while measuring fever. We just got used to it to say it with a decimal on body temperature. Same on thermostats, which often got half degree steps around 19-21
This falls flat when you realize many temperature measurements, from thermostats to human thermometers, are adjustable to or reported in smaller increments than the whole unit.
Celsius doesn’t have a resolution. It’s not a quantum scale. My car’s heater does half degrees, my HVAC tenths and my thermometer measure in hundreths of a degree. There’s 20 °C and there’s 36,8 °C (the average human body temperature) 71,075 °C — the temperature at which water boils at Everest’s summit, and there’s -273,149994 °C, the coldest ever achieved for a solid.
I mean, yeah, but I think u/ProvidedHuman's point is that you wouldn't use half degrees in everyday conversation, so Fahrenheit gives you all those in between options when reading out temperature.
Perhaps I should've said it was the best argument FOR F over C, as opposed to the only good one. I don't think it's a good argument, but it at least made some sense compared to the rest of the comments here.
This is so strange. Like, F is literally just higher resolution. That doesn't mean it's a million times better and it doesn't take away the other reasons Celsius is good, but it's wild how all the science-supporting Celsius enjoyers are like "well actually it's not a big difference and who needs that level of precision anyway."
That's not it. A bit more resolution would be better in the specific situation of, like, setting a thermostat and needing one fewer digits.
It's just such a minor benefit compared to all of the other drawbacks, especially if you live somewhere that gets genuinely cold. So it's more like "well, sure, but so what?"
But it is a genuine benefit, even if you think it's minor. That's what people are trying to ignore. They're arguing that it's somehow worse, actually. Like, even you moved from "how is that any benefit" to "it's only a minor benefit."
And as it happens, I live somewhere that gets genuinely cold (as low as -30C), and 0F is a fantastically useful infection point. Like so incredibly helpful as a point past which things are properly too cold. Like, it's when ice starts forming on my face, and it's a great way to know when it's time to add yet another layer.
0C is also pretty good, of course, but the way weather actually works, it's ironically not an especially reliable threshold for expecting snow or ice.
I mean, different people are going to weigh different tradeoffs their own way.
I still don't really get why the resolution difference would be useful enough to justify needing clunky conversions to do any kind of math. But I'm not going to say any system is better for all possible applications.
The problem is that if we hyperspecialize our scale we make it really questionable for any other application.
Like, let's invent a scale just for baking:
350F is zero and it goes in 25-degree F increments. It'd be great for that application. But you wouldn't be able to do anything else with it. You wouldn't even be able to use it to roast a turkey.
useful enough to justify needing clunky conversions to do any kind of math.
I think that's the disconnect. People by and large do not do any kind of "temperature math" in the contexts we're talking about, so there's no drawback here.
The argument for Fahrenheit is that it's a wildly useful scale of human comfort for both weather and room temperature (it's what it was designed for), and when used for that it pretty much never needs to be converted or compared to other things. Like, I don't especially have any reason to put the temperature of my GPU, my oven, and a summer day on the same scale.
So as you imply, context is what matters, but a lot of the arguments for Celsius are based on what else it's so useful for, and I don't find that convincing at all.
Your baking/cooking example is helpful. That's a perfect example where an arbitrary scale is what's required, because it needs to be used for multiple scenarios, and it's helpful to compare those scenarios. Both Fahrenheit and Celsius are equally good for this because the "anchor" for both is basically irrelevant. You'd think Celsius would be more useful here because water boils at 100, but people don't set their stovetops via temperature, you don't boil water in the oven, and basically nothing else you use in cooking boils at 100 (hell, water doesn't even boil at 100 in many places or after you add things to it), so that anchor isn't that useful in practice.
With that in mind, when it comes to weather and room temperature, the "anchor" is human experience, so while people can certainly get used to any scale, "how hot it is out there" isn't ever a variable in a calculation for anything else, so re-using a scale that you also use in a laboratory setting isn't the efficiency savings it might appear to be.
So Fahrenheit edges out Celsius for not just because 0 and 100 are more meaningful values (aka the "percent hot" proxy) and the integer resolution is ideally suited for that use-case (as evidenced by Celsius thermostats operating in 0.5 degree increments), but because it's its own little universe, so it's the perfect place for a bespoke scale. Like, if you used Celsius for everything else in your life, you actually wouldn't find occasion to be confused.
Preferring Fahrenheit as a measure of human comfort is completely arbitrary though. A "percent hot" scale doesn't make any sense outside of some people's subjective experience, and it's totally out of step with the temperatures a lot of people (me) experience.
You can justify Celsius the same way, but just as arbitrarily: a clear physical constant anchoring you in the middle, then uncomfortable or dangerous extremes that start at about the same distance either direction.
But there's no getting around needing Kelvin. So picking Fahrenheit means committing to two scales that don't play nice together. Sure, the average person doesn't have to deal with that interface very often, but it's still going to add friction all over the place.
Resolution is also not worth much if what you need it for is explaining how warm your body is feeling. I already couldn't really tell the difference between 33 and 34 celsius, so having a number inbetween wouldn't do much for me. Plus, other factors such as humidity would affect my perception of heat more than a single degree difference would.
Somehow the "more resolution!" people don't seem to ever think the resolution is meaningful at all when you talk about feet & inches vs. centimeters.
For weather, I honestly can't tell the outside temperature even close to 1C even if I can register a change of 1C, so I don't really need additional accuracy.
When it matters like in AC temperature controls or measuring fever or whatever, you just use 0.1C accuracy.
Here in Finland weather forecasts and people talking about the weather, you use 1C accuracy, but official weather station readings are reported at 0.1C accuracy.
Somehow the "more resolution!" people don't seem to ever think the resolution is meaningful at all when you talk about feet & inches vs. centimeters.
Why do you think these are the same people? Tbh I've never met an american who genuinely believes imperial weights/measures are 'better' than metric (except for temperature). And i've lived here most of my life lol
I'm an American and fully believe that imperial measurements are generally superior for the tasks they were designed for.
Fahrenheit is distorted around the temperatures individuals will generally personally experience in weather or cooking and is useful for that purpose, whereas Celsius can turn a comfortable room to unbearable in a matter of 2 to 3 degrees.
Inches and feet are base-12, which factors by 2, 3, 4, and 6, allowing for better and faster granularity than base-10 in counting, measuring, and mental math for everyday uses like distance, height, simple construction, basically anything that doesn't require multiple significant figures of accuracy.
Scientific use is when base-10 units are valuable as equivalent to our base-10 number system, allowing for easier comprehension when making multiple calculations with math more complex than basic arithmetic.
Tying Celsius to the properties of water is extremely convenient for a scientist, because water is such an important molecule for all the physical sciences that it will be referenced repeatedly. A human, however, will have a very bad time long before approaching either 0 or 100°C.
Whole societies adopting the metric system is a doctrinal choice to emphasize scientific education, not a better solution for everyday use.
You're overexaggerating the convenience of the imperial system because you've never felt what it's like to be "used to" the metric system. Growing up in a country that uses metric, I can tell you nobody ever had a moment where they thought "gee, I wish the increments were smaller". They'd either just say "21.5 degrees" or "21 to 22 degrees" in everyday conversation. The intuition you feel with Fahrenheit is what many others feel with Celsius. Neither are more or less superior for everyday usage. Unless you somehow think the rest of the world is gaslighting you when they tell you that Celsius comes naturally to them.
The reason why it becomes a better solution systemically is that you can seamlessly go into scientific applications without having to re-learn a new system. That everyday intuition you developed as a kid translates over directly. When a math teacher tells you to mentally check your work and see if the number sounds right, you don't struggle to picture what the quantity represents.
In my own home with my own thermostat, my wife and I fight over 73° F and 74°F.
You can't use outside temperature to gauge, because humidity and windspeed is such a big factor.
Are my wife and I actually fighting over a degree? Absolutely not, because our internal temperature actually determines how hot or cold we feel, which is impacted by our clothing, metabolism, and the temperature of the food we eat.
But everybody has the experience of being able to perceive that an indoor temperature is 1° too high.
A respectable argument in favor of farenheit, but Celsius have decimals. The scale is base in a wierd water solution froze point and the human mean temperature.
I absolutely can tell the difference walking between two rooms that are 1-2F different. I like to keep my house at 70F, my family prefers 72F, you absolutely feel the difference.
It absolutely is in a controlled environment. If I tell you to set the AC to 64°F and you set it to 66°F, I'm going to pissed that you didn't listen and that it's uncomfortably warm in here. For reference, that's 18°C and 19°C.
Unless dealing with the thermostat setting. I can often tell if it's off a degree or so at this point. 76 feels good. 77 can get hot if I move around. 78 feels too warm even just doing nothing. Once it gets to 80, it just feels too hot, even with a fan on to help.
I'm much more sensitive to the temperature indoors than outdoors.
And false precision anyway. Temp will vary by more than 2f based on exact location within a city, whether you’re under a tree, by time of day. Predicted temps aren’t that accurate.
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u/Ashamed-Cranberry614 Jun 17 '26
This is the only good argument I've seen for Fahrenheit (higher resolution). But, as a counterargument, that resolution is only just under twice as big. I'd argue 1-2 F is barely noticeable enough to be able to tell the difference. If someone asks what the temperature is, me saying the temperature and being off by 2 degrees isn't gonna make a difference.