461–470 of 589 posts
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Nit: 1/3 of a meter is rational. You're looking for "whole number."
Correct - I've admittedly had a few beers. Which might be obvious due to me debating the merits of the number 12 on the internet.
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Not only is it trivial to just cut at 33.33 or what have you, your argument breaks down at cut it into 1/5s. Good luck with imperial. And has to be accurate to .02mm. In metric? This is a no brainer
That doesn't really hurt the argument at all - you're just arguing about factors now, and if you're really going to go there, 12 wins due to having more factors. The mathematical correction you'll have to do to measure 1/5th will be displaced by all the correction you don't have to do for other cases.
How about 1/3rd of a tree? It's likely to be in some ungodly fractional amount of an inch, that's extremely hard to convert into feet, but in metric the decimal system just makes it super easy.
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Humans are naturally bad at base 10. This is noticeable when learning counting and arithmetic - children often skip 7 and jumble 6, 7, 8. Base-10 is not so bad once one has learned it, though. Humans are really good at doubling and halving, which the Imperial system excels at.
That's false, the Imperial system is pretty bad at doubling or halving. What's double of 3.7 feet? Or half of 1.5? What is 3.7 feet even? Is it 3 feet 7 inches or 3 feet plus 7th of a feet (This last question is a nitpick) Any of these in metric are super simple, but just harder to do in base-12.
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>They're more ... human, maybe, in that a foot is about one human foot long, and that an inch is about one human thumb width, and how 0F feels "pretty cold" and 100F feels "pretty hot", and to me the charm of imperial units begins and ends right there. As far as we know, humans are the only thing in the universe that care about any of this stuff. A computer couldn't care less if you are using 1 foot or 0.3048 meters.…
Also, the statement that metric is more useful for measurement largely ignores the fact that Imperial has stuck around so long because of its usefulness in trade work. It's definitely ONLY because of base12, but being base12 - imo - positions it far beyond metric for daily use. There's a reason why food items so commonly come by the dozen. Why would anyone prefer to build a house using a system that can't even accura…
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They're globally standard, decimal, and internally consistent. One never needs to wonder how many meters in a kilometer or how many grams in a kilogram. They have some human usable qualities as well; it's convenient that water freezes at 0°C and that a kilogram of water is also a liter.
Are they globally “standard?” China uses Mou to measure land area. A pyeong is used in Korea for housing floor area, the British use pints in the pub and stone when weighing themselves. The US uses feet and pounds. We use clocks that have 60 seconds, 60 minutes, 24 hours, weeks, months. If we want to be consistent, “minutes” should perhaps be 100 seconds, for instance. Horses are measured in “hands.” “Global standard…
Standards make it easy for people to work with each other across borders, and most of the world uses metric already. NASA has since then started all of their new projects on Metric too.
I do agree with your point about the fact that weights and measures can be accurate regardless of the units used, the argument against Imperial isn't about accuracy, it's about ease of conversion and changing bases of the unit scale. (Like 12 inches to a foot, but 3 feet to a yard etc)
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In most practical applications that I've seen fractions of imperial measurements used, it tends to be in powers of 2, i.e., 3/16 inch, 1/4 mile, etc. Decimals can certainly be used, but for most applications where you'd use something like a "millionth of an inch," it's vastly more common to use metric.
In my experience (electronics manufacturing), both PCBs and machined parts are usually in mils or decimal inches, although millimeters are becoming more common and many drawings show both systems.
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Humans are naturally bad at base 10. This is noticeable when learning counting and arithmetic - children often skip 7 and jumble 6, 7, 8. Base-10 is not so bad once one has learned it, though. Humans are really good at doubling and halving, which the Imperial system excels at.
That's false, the Imperial system is pretty bad at doubling or halving. What's double of 3.7 feet? Or half of 1.5? What is 3.7 feet even? Is it 3 feet 7 inches or 3 feet plus 7th of a feet (This last question is a nitpick) Any of these in metric are super simple, but just harder to do in base-12.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly not a proponent of the Imperial system (for instance, calculating prices for groceries is painful). I am just pointing out that the metric system doesn’t take into account many Human use cases (Base-10 isn’t great for Humans). It was a system forced upon people by an ‘ivory tower’, and consistent with US philosophy, it makes sense that they rejected it.
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They're globally standard, decimal, and internally consistent. One never needs to wonder how many meters in a kilometer or how many grams in a kilogram. They have some human usable qualities as well; it's convenient that water freezes at 0°C and that a kilogram of water is also a liter.
Are they globally “standard?” China uses Mou to measure land area. A pyeong is used in Korea for housing floor area, the British use pints in the pub and stone when weighing themselves. The US uses feet and pounds. We use clocks that have 60 seconds, 60 minutes, 24 hours, weeks, months. If we want to be consistent, “minutes” should perhaps be 100 seconds, for instance. Horses are measured in “hands.” “Global standard…
People who wanted actual definition of units.
Once upon a time if you wanted to sell stuff in my home City you would need to use the city measurements made via a really big stone tablet in the old roman center with various units of lengths.
This was hard to communicate and stuff.
The French decided that one unit of measurement was better than many and made one "easy" (possible) to replicate and validate when the imperial one still used medium sized wheat seeds as measure of pressure.
But now everything is ultimately standardized on the metric system (even the US).
So one need to ask better at what? Better to standardize? Metric no doubt. Better to use? Well this appears to be controversial
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Frankly, while mathematically speaking 12 is a great base, people don't think in twelves - you can quickly perform arithmetic and our entire education system of math relies on base 10. Kind of hard to suddenly add two fingers to everyone. Additionally, base 12, would not act like 12 does in base 10, thus if base 12 is your key point of reference, a foot should be 10 in base 12 for inches.....
Additionally, base 12, would not act like 12 does in base 10, thus if base 12 is your key point of reference, a foot should be 10 in base 12 for inches..... I honestly cannot make any sense of this part of your argument. The symbols 10 would only look like ten they would still mean a dozen and the properties would remain the same. Furthermore people don’t think in twelves because we are not taught in a dozenal number…
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They're globally standard, decimal, and internally consistent. One never needs to wonder how many meters in a kilometer or how many grams in a kilogram. They have some human usable qualities as well; it's convenient that water freezes at 0°C and that a kilogram of water is also a liter.
a kilogram of water is also a liter I have never, in around four decades of living, had an actual need to determine the mass of a given volume of water, or the volume of a given mass of water. When cooking, I routinely need to split some quantity of an ingredient into thirds or quarters. Yet I am also constantly told that I'm ignorant and backwards and irrational for preferring a system that optimizes for the latter,…
Why?