Talk:Mile

Attempts to Correlate

One source implies that all miles are 8 stadia, and that all stadia are 600 of their national foot. But the English mile of 5280 feet is exactly 8 of 660 English feet; the Roman mile of 5000 Roman feet is exactly 8 of 625 feet. Greek stadia come in three forms and yet the metric conversion doesn't explain their own correlation to their own units. There is definately error because how does 8 Italian stadia equal more meters than the English mile requiring 5000 Roman feet to be larger than the 5280 English feet and yet publish a Roman foot as 11.65 English inches? Another publication states the mistake of Columbus using 20,400 Italian miles as Earth's circumference instead of 20,400 Arabic miles of which here this article says Arabic mile is 1 minute of latitude thus 360x 60 min 21,600 min to equal 21,600 miles which is 1200 miles longer circumference than the other source. Now it would make more sense that a degree would be 60 Arabic miles not 56.6 Arabic miles. But is sense enough proof? Earth's degree of latitude is very close to 69 English miles which could be the unit spaces between 70 points, thus logic.

Your issue is solved by conversion of feet to mm.

Romans used a pes of 296 mm. 625 pes = 185 m

Greeks a pous of 308.4 mm 600 pous = 185 m

An English foot of 304.8 mm was originally the Roman/Greek stadia

The Roman Milliare or Mile had 8 stadiums of 185 m (625 pes or feet of 296 mm) and was also 1000 paces.

The Greek Mia Chilios (one thousand) had 8 stadions of 185 m (600 pous or feet of 308.4 mm)

75 Greek or Roman miles was 1 degree of 111 km.

In 1593 Queen Elizabeth signed a decree changing the old Roman Mile to 8 furlongs of 660 Roman pes so that 75 Roman miles were no longer 1 degree of 111 km but there were now twice as many seconds in a century as inches in the circumference of the earth at the Equator. This may have been associated with the discovery of the seconds pendulum usually considered a later development

In the Julian calendar, the average length of a year is 365.25 days. In a non-leap year, there are 365 days, in a leap year there are 366 days. A leap year occurs every four years.

The Revised Julian calendar, as used in some Eastern Orthodox Churches, currently does a better job of synchronizing with the mean tropical year. The average length of this calendar's year is 365.2422222 days (as 218 out of 900 years are leap years). Gregorian and Revised Julian calendars will start to differ in 2800.[7]

Allowing some round off take the value as 365.24 days in a year.

The Seconds in a century = 60 seconds in 1 minute, 60 minutes in one hour, 24 hours in one day, 365.24 days in one year.

365,239.99996 feet to a degree = 360 degrees of 69.1742424167 miles (round to 365,240 feet to a degree = 69.17 mi.)

360 degrees of 69.1742424167 miles = 24902.727 miles equatorial circumference

60 x 60 x 24 x 365.24 x 100 = 3,155,673,600 seconds in a century twice the equator of the Earth in inches = 1,577,836,800

1,577,836,800 inches to 360 degrees

4,382,880 inches to 1 degree

For Queen Elizabeth 23906618.1792 seconds in the circumference of the Earth at the equator = 69.1742424167... miles in a degree

111.3251519878616 km

In Roman Miles 111 km = 68.9722 Miles in a degree

142.0.102.230 (talk) 08:11, 8 December 2015 (UTC) It would seem to me that if mile means 1000 (mil) then they started with the largest unit of Earth circumference as 24 hours each 1000 miles thus 24,000 miles. Unfortunately, these 1000 miles of one hour (60 minutes of time) are 15 degrees of longitude (900 minutes of arc), and thus divides these 900 minutes of arc to be 1.1111 mile per minute of arc, or the more exact 0.9 minute of arc for every mile. Until, Earth was proven more than 24,000 miles. So if the English mile was an atrempt to claim exact 1000s of miles for Earth, this is why it varies from the 5000-foot Roman mile which you would think evolved from 5 miles each mile as 1000 feet. or was there some unit that could be 1000 of 5 Roman feet? Special:Contributions/75.86.172.174|75.86.172.174]] (talk) 22:00, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

It is a simplier habbit of Swedish miles

The following: "In Norway and Sweden, a mil is a unit of length equal to 10 kilometres and commonly used in everyday language. However in more formal situations, such as on road signs and when there is risk of confusion with English miles, kilometres are used instead." should be replaced by this: "In Norway and Sweden, a mil is a unit of length equal to 10 kilometres and commonly used in everyday language. However in all formal situations, such as on road signs and law, kilometres are used. For instance road signs are read in km (like 348 km) and the last digit rounded up and always expressed in common talk always in miles (like 35 miles!)."

K is temperature and not distance

When Eurosport by Giro d'Itala says, "Oh they have 10K left" it is very very cold, and the bikes will crack and the bikers die, quick. It is really very bad language of an international Tv-channel and they should really take some internal talks about it.

Nope. Welcome to English. — LlywelynII 06:01, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

Length of Roman mile

The article on Pace (unit) gives the length of a pace (two steps) as 58.1 inches. This article on the mile says a Roman mile is 1000 paces (ie 2000 steps) so therefore a Roman mile was 0.91698 of an Imperial mile. But the Imperial units article says that there are two paces for every step rather than the two steps for every pace that this article gives, so they are inconsistent. 2.101.12.80 (talk) 15:08, 29 June 2014 (UTC) Not inconsistent. one is WRONG. Or do we have 4 pints in a quart and 2 quarts in a gallon because people don't know quart and quarter means 4? Maybe these Romans were amputees working at IHOP. I would like to know why there is such sensitive issue at correcting other's mistakes, ie if you dont like K for kilometer because it is a temp for Kelvin then change it in the article to km. Many people are confused with a single m for meter when the m could be mile (mi); why not me. Or how about caps versus small 1km = 1000m not 1000M. (?) Face it no standard system cause cross-confusion that results in wasted money on Mars landers crashing, while forced standards are for many another slavery. Does it matter Columbus thought he was in China! 75.86.172.174 (talk) 22:14, 28 August 2014 (UTC)

Incorrect and untrustworthy reference in preamble

The preamble, third paragraph, makes the claim:

the international mile continues to be used in some countries such as [...] the United Kingdom[3]

The footnote [3] refers to an opinion piece from the UK Metric Association detailing cherrypicked objections to continued use of MPH has a unit of speed. The opinion piece does not back up the assertion that the UK uses the International Mile, (nor does is any claim made that the mile used in the UK is defined in terms of metric units). I suggest the link is removed altogether, to be substituted with a link to some suitable legal decision detailing the UK's definition of a mile. --Rfsmit (talk) 20:52, 29 July 2014 (UTC)

WP:ENGVAR

This edit established the use of the page as British English, which should kindly be maintained pending a new consensus. Given that the UK has metricised itself, however, I do feel there should be a new consensus to use American English or at least a compromise that we use the abbreviated form (k)m instead of the spelling (kilo)metre or meter. — LlywelynII 06:00, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

WP:USEENGLISH

In other news, miglio isn't different from the Italian mile. What was meant was (one kind of) the Sicilian mile as opposed to the Italian mile, both of which were called miglio/a in Italian. One way to clean that up is to remember that the English term should come first and the foreign-language term should be the one in italics and parentheses. — LlywelynII 06:04, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

The common singular Latin form was mille passus; unusually, the partitive genitive milia passuum seems to be much more common for the plural. We should include the other major forms here since there isn't a separate article for them but we should use the most common form in our running text. Uncommon forms can go to Wiktionary if we have entries to link to with {{linktext}}.

Meanwhile, the terms Arab mile, Arabic mile, and Arabian mile are all fairly common in English but the MOST COMMON name is currently "Arabic mile" and we should just use that here, leaving the laundry list for its special article since it has one. (Separately, it also suits the fact that the units page is at "Ancient Arabic units of measurement".) — LlywelynII 06:23, 5 April 2015 (UTC)

London milestone

If it's really thought confusing to label a milestone patently showing the distance from Westminster to London as

"a Westminster milestone showing the distance... to London"

then just replace the image with something else. I understand there's a metropolitan London that ate both Westminster and the City but It makes no sense whatsoever to describe it as a "London milestone" showing the distance to itself. Now, that said, I find the correct caption perfectly straightforward and even helpful, given that it links directly to the City of London article rather than the London area one. — LlywelynII 10:14, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Hyde Park Corner is not in the City of London. The caption is clearer now. --TBM10 (talk) 10:35, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

It's fine if the milestone is incorrect and it's not actually the distance to the City of London. It's wonderful to fix the link to a more direct page. It is NOT acceptable AT ALL to say that a London milestone is pointing at itself. You're bumping up against WP:3RR so either let it alone or as suggested just find a better image to use here as a compromise measure. Surely there has to be something more attractive and historically notable. Did London have a zero-mile marker? Paris? — LlywelynII 11:58, 12 April 2015 (UTC)

Nitpick re: "about" / "exact"

In the discussion of survey mile "about 1609.347 218 694 metres.... one international mile is exactly 0.999 998 survey miles." The former number, with 13 sig figs, is "definitely good enough for government work" ... so close that it seems like a waste of ink to write "about." The 0.999998 is even more extremely close ... accurate to 18 sig figs if my arithmetic is correct, but not exact. The survey foot is still defined as 12/39.37 meters. I changed "exactly" to "almost exactly" lest reader think it's definitional. (Source? Wikipedia!) Septimus.stevens (talk) 03:24, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

As a matter of interest:

1 mile = 1.609344*(3937/6336) US survey miles exactly

= 0.9999979999999999... US survey miles

I'm too lazy to properly investigate, but according to bc, there are more than 5,000 9s following the 7. Considering 0.999..., there may be an argument that 1 mile is exactly 0.999998 US survey miles! Johnuniq (talk) 05:30, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

That was a lot easier than I thought. It turns out that

1609344*3937/6336 = 999998 exactly

and that means 1 international mile = 999998/1e6 = 0.999998 exactly.

I will restore it in the article. Johnuniq (talk) 11:57, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

For posterity, here are some details based on the fact that 1 US survey foot = 1200/3937 meters (see here).

${\begin{aligned}{\dfrac {\text{1 international mile}}{\text{1 US survey mile}}}&={\dfrac {5280\times {\dfrac {12\times 25.4}{1000}}\;{\text{meters}}}{5280\times {\dfrac {1200}{3937}}\;{\text{meters}}}}\\[8pt]&={\dfrac {12\times 254\times 3937}{10000\times 1200}}\\[8pt]&={\dfrac {254\times 3937}{10000\times 100}}\\[8pt]&={\dfrac {999998}{1000000}}\\[8pt]&=0.999998\;{\text{exactly}}\end{aligned}}$

Johnuniq (talk) 22:39, 29 September 2015 (UTC)

Thanks, Johnuniq, for fighting my ignorance. I'm very embarrassed; I used to think I was good with numbers. (In fact, years ago I'm pretty sure I did your calculation ... and forgot it.) Maybe I'm getting too senile.  :-( My excuse is that I used bc but, despite large 'scale', the way I set it up intermediate results were inaccurate. Apologies. I'm embarrassed even to post this, but think you deserve acknowledgement. Septimus.stevens (talk) 15:47, 9 October 2015 (UTC)