Importance of Units o:

You may not realize it, but you use units of measurement every day. Consider the following statements, does one of them strike you more than the other?

“I lost 100 dollars.”   versus   “I lost 100 cents.”
“I’m 15 minutes late for school.”   versus   “I’m 15 seconds late for school.”

There’s a HUGE difference between each of these statements, and it’s because of the units. We use these “everyday” units so frequently we often forget they are even there. In the poem “Smart”, by Shel Silverstein, he reminds of us of how smart we can be if we just ignore the units. I’ll include an excerpt:

And then I took the quarters
and traded them to Lou
For three dimes–I guess he don’t know
That three is more than two!

This sounds ridiculous when we talk about money, because we all know money so well, we don’t even think of dollars and cents as units anymore. We understand that 1 unit of dollars is equal to 100 units of cents. But what if I told you these mistakes happen more often than you think…