> A cm is about right. You need something about a foot, tho. Otherwise you 
> get things like "he was 197 cm tall". Note that people really rarely use 
> "yards" as a measure here. It's feet and miles, unless you're measuring 
> something that's particularly sold by the yard, like cloth.

But as soon as you need to do anything with those numbers (eg adding, 
dividing etc) it's much easier to use 197 cm than 6 foot 5 (or whatever).

> Having numbers that go below zero for everyday temperatures seems less 
> convenient.

No, it's obvious that 0 is "freezing", below that is where stuff is frozen 
and outside looks white, above that stuff melts.  In normal life "stuff" is 
water, so having 0 as the freezing point of water seems to make perfect 
sense.

> Not if you're constructing something. Then you want to be able to take a 
> third of it, for example.

And what if you need more accuracy than 1 inch (which is required in most 
household items), do you say 5 foot 10 point 7 or what?  What if you need 5 
foot 3 point 85 divided into 2?  Dividing 158.3 cm into 2 is much easier.

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