A mile is a unit of length in a number of different systems. In contemporary English, mile most commonly refers to the statute mile of 5,280 feet (exactly 1,609.344 meters) or the nautical mile of 1,852 meters (about 6,076.1 ft). There are many other historical miles, and similar units in other systems translated as miles in English, varying between one and fifteen kilometers. It is about a third of the old measurement, the league.
Use of the mile as a unit of measurement is largely confined to the United States and the United Kingdom where it remains customary. Elsewhere it has been replaced by the kilometer as a measure of distance.
There have been several abbreviations for mile (with and without trailing period): mi, ml, m, M. In the United States, the National Institute of Standards and Technology now uses and recommends mi[1] but in everyday usage (at least in the United States and in the United Kingdom) usages such as miles per hour and miles per gallon are almost always abbreviated as mph or mpg (rather than mi/h or mi/gal).
The formula "multiply by 8 and divide by 5" to convert miles to kilometers gives a conversion of 1.6. As it is only slightly lower than the actual conversion factors, it is a useful approximation.
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