Assume you need to know to what extent it will take you to get from your
house to some other place. You ask me, and I say, "It will take 5."
5 what? 5 minutes? 5 hours? 5 days?
We utilize numbers to speak to stuff on the planet. Some of the time it's simply
checking, e.g.,
I discovered 9 mushrooms today.
I discovered 18 yesterday.
So now I have 9 + 18 = 27 mushrooms.
Yet, some of the time we're utilizing numbers to speak to things that we measure,
like separations or weights or ranges:
I have a board 12 feet long.
I need to cut it into pieces 3 feet long.
I can cut it into (12 feet)/(3 feet for each piece) = 4 pieces.
We can utilize diverse methods for measuring something, e.g.,
I have a board 144 inches in length.
I need to cut it into pieces 3 feet long.
In the event that I simply isolate 144 by 3, without focusing on units, I get an
reply of 48. In any case, what does it mean? It's an indistinguishable issue from
some time recently, since 144 inches is an indistinguishable thing from 12 feet! So I would do well to
find a similar solution - 4 pieces, not 48. To find a similar solution, I have
to change my units:
I have a board 144 inches in length.
I need to cut it into pieces 36 inches long.
I can cut it into (144 inches)/(36 inches per piece) = 4 pieces.
So units are the means by which we ensure that our figurings about the world
