Measurements that confuse me

    Nearly everything in the world can be measured by numbers and the higher the number the more/bigger the item is. However, some things don’t follow this obvious numbering scheme and they make my head hurt.

Women’s clothes

      Let’s assign an arbitrary number instead of a measurement. Now let’s skip every other number. And let’s make 0 a size. 

 

     How can 0 be a size? It should be the absence of a size. But it gets even worse. What if it’s smaller than a size 0? Well let’s call that a double 0. So somehow 00 is smaller than 0. Obviously the creators of this system were not mathematicians.

Bed sizes

A twin bed is the smallest bed. From the name of it, you’d think it could fit 2 people, but it can’t. 

     Then you look at the other sizes: Full, Queen, King. So maybe a twin is just half a full? That would make sense, because as we all know, a twin is only half of a full person. But 2 twins don’t make up a Full anyway. 2 twins would be wider than a full. However, 2 twins would be the same width as a Queen, but not the same length. Confused yet? At least King and Queen make sense, it’s easy to tell which on is bigger. But it gets tricky when you get bigger than King. There’s a California king that’s even bigger. So I guess everything is bigger in Cali? I thought everything was bigger in Texas. Maybe they should just go by playing cards and call it an Ace. How about just calling them by their length and width measurements? Nah, far too easy.

Wire gauge

So the smaller the number, the bigger the wire? 

     That’s really confusing. So say I’ve got a 12 ga. Wire and that’s not big enough. So I’ll switch to something bigger. How about 2 ga.? No that would be way too big. What's the biggest size you have? Size 0. Huh?
 
 

 

Tennis scoring

   The first point you win in a game is worth 15 points. So is the 2^nd. But the 3^rd is only worth 10. I’m not even gonna get into deuce. For example, if I win the first 2 points of a game, the score would be 30-0. Now if you win the next point, you get 15 points. However, if I were to win that point, it would only be worth 10. That’s racist.

But here’s where they really get me. Every time someone wins a game, there score is increased by 1. Then when they win enough games, their number of sets is increased by 1. When they win enough sets, they win the match. So the creators of tennis scoring understand how to keep it simple and add 1 for every game won, or every set won, but chose not to do so for every point won.

On to the most confusing measurement system

Light bulbs

They have different sizes, but they are labeled with letters.

I can’t even argue why it is a bad system because I have no idea how it works. I just match the letter of what I need, or I bring the burnt out bulb with me. Good luck getting the right one, cause I can’t help you.