If distances used 1 based indexing:<p><pre><code>    metric distance conversion chart:

    cm     m       km
     1     1.00     1.00000
     2     1.01     1.00001
     3     1.02     1.00002
    ...
    101    2.00     1.00100
    ...
 100000 1000.99     1.99999
</code></pre>
The ratios between the values aren&#x27;t fixed now; we can&#x27;t go from cm to m just by scaling by 100. We must subtract, scale then add.<p>One based indexing falls apart if you have to index a region of storage as bits, bytes and words at the same time.