I’ve been using the Wii Fit for quite a while now to track my weight.  We had friends over recently who were talking about their weight and BMI and we thought it would be fun to use the Wii to do this.  One of the measurements we needed to put in was height, which led to a discussion on our heights.

In the U.K. height is measured in feet and inches.  In Japan they use centimetres.  It turns out that I didn’t know how to accurately convert between the two.  In school I had been taught that 30 centimetres was one foot.  This made me believe that 5 feet was 150 centimetres but it’s actually 152.4 centimetres.  I hadn’t realised that in school I was being taught an approximation based on the standard size of ruler we used to use.

This means that I’m actually about 3 centimetres taller than I thought.  Pity I’m not actually taller, the problem was just converting between the units.  Though updating the Wii with my real height does improve my BMI.