4 ms·

The base 12 numbering system is far more practical for trades that transact in halves, thirds, quarters, and sixths. 12 inches, dozen eggs, 24 hours, 360 degre

The base 12 numbering system is far more practical for trades that transact in halves, thirds, quarters, and sixths. 12 inches, dozen eggs, 24 hours, 360 degree circle is 30 sets of 12... If it weren't for the human justification of having 10 fingers on our hands, the base 10 metric system may not have gained traction at all.

yoo1I 10y ago
I wonder how counting the segments of your remaining four fingers with your thumb fell out of style in favour of just counting your fingers. You can do it with one hand, you can easily visualize dividing by two and four, you can count higher (144 if you use two hands), and it clearly looks way cooler.
- zkhalique 10y ago
  Can you share some links about when it was in style?
  - hugs 10y ago
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal#Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal#Origin
    - jacobolus 10y ago
      “A traditional counting system still in use in many regions of Asia works in this way, and could help to explain the occurrence of numeral systems based on 12 and 60 besides those based on 10, 20 and 5.” Sounds pretty speculative. Has there been historical research about the age of these “traditional counting systems”? I’m skeptical that this is the origin of the Sumerian number system.
    - lucb1e 10y ago
      I feel like I missed out on something big, having never heard about this in my life. As big as if I'd never heard of this unused (for us) Fahrenheit system, except in this case base 12 is objectively superior. I can count binary on my fingers and get much further than with decimal obviously, but it's not very practical or easy to learn. This makes fantastic sense and sounds almost as easy as decimal, the only difference being that it goes a few digits further.
jacobolus 10y ago
A base twelve number system is in general much nicer than base ten for basically every purpose... except backwards compatibility with existing tradition. It’s essentially impossible to switch our whole civilization over to base twelve at this point. From what I understand, in places without a highly developed positional number system, fractions for units were generally developed in an ad-hoc way, for convenience, whereas in places with a more entrenched base ten tradition (especially in East Asia where the “abacus” was made of beads on a fixed frame instead of a collection of loose pebbles on a board) fractional units were more often tenths. The metric system takes that tendency to an extreme. In general, the metric system is an example of building a system less well suited to particular use cases, but overall more cohesive and systematic. Since modern people are universally schooled in base ten positional arithmetic, the metric system becomes reasonably familiar and convenient.
nickserv 10y ago
The US system isn't bad because it's not base 10, it's bad because it's horribly inconsistent. Quick - how many inches in 1.25 miles?
- sverige 10y ago
  79,200. Why would you need to know that? Edit: This made me think about the scale of things you're measuring. Roads are generally best measured in miles, not yards, feet, or inches. Some things are better measured in yards (like football fields or concrete (cubic yards)). Some things are best measured in feet, and some things in inches. The avoirdupois system is human sized. The metric system is based on some inaccurate 18th century French calculation of the circumference of the earth, IIRC. Why would you care what your height is in relationship to the circumference of the earth? That never made sense to me. Rarely does it matter if you can convert from one unit to the other. The only exception I can think of is when doubling or halving a recipe - going from teaspoons to tablespoons or liquid ounces can be a pain.
  - Veratyr 10y ago
    Maybe I have to cover a road with 11 inch long bricks and I need to know how many to buy? The problem is that although perhaps certain units may be good for measuring certain things, the things you use those measurements for will frequently involve things that use different units. To take your road example again, what if I want to find out how many revolutions it takes a wheel with a 4 foot circumference to travel a mile? What if I want to find out how many yard long strides it takes to go down a road? The metric units are interoperable. That's their big advantage.
- matchagaucho 10y ago
  Architects and Carpenters use inches and feet because they're constantly dividing by 2,3,4, and 6. Converting to miles is not practical.
- MasterYoda 10y ago
  Inconsistent is a good description. It feels like a rollercoaster... https://morganalyx.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/metric-system.jpg https://morganalyx.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/metric-system...
anotherevan 10y ago
And Betamax was vastly superior.
gmiller123456 10y ago
Your argument would make sense if our system were actually base 12, or if we actually worked in halves or thirds of feet. Or if we ever had a reason to convert feet to eggs, or feet to hours. No, the base changes for every unit of measurement. Inches are divided into 16ths, feet into 12ths, yards, into thirds, miles into 1760ths. Inches are the worst as the base changes depending on how accurate you want to be, or if the fraction can be simplified, 3/8ths 7/16ths, 15/32nds. And of course all of the numbers used to count them are base 10. The metric system uses base 10 all around. Not because we have 10 fingers, but because that's the system most widely used.

yoo1I 10y ago

I wonder how counting the segments of your remaining four fingers with your thumb fell out of style in favour of just counting your fingers. You can do it with one hand, you can easily visualize dividing by two and four, you can count higher (144 if you use two hands), and it clearly looks way cooler.

zkhalique 10y ago
Can you share some links about when it was in style?
- hugs 10y ago
  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal#Origin https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal#Origin
  - jacobolus 10y ago
    “A traditional counting system still in use in many regions of Asia works in this way, and could help to explain the occurrence of numeral systems based on 12 and 60 besides those based on 10, 20 and 5.” Sounds pretty speculative. Has there been historical research about the age of these “traditional counting systems”? I’m skeptical that this is the origin of the Sumerian number system.
  - lucb1e 10y ago
    I feel like I missed out on something big, having never heard about this in my life. As big as if I'd never heard of this unused (for us) Fahrenheit system, except in this case base 12 is objectively superior. I can count binary on my fingers and get much further than with decimal obviously, but it's not very practical or easy to learn. This makes fantastic sense and sounds almost as easy as decimal, the only difference being that it goes a few digits further.

jacobolus 10y ago

A base twelve number system is in general much nicer than base ten for basically every purpose... except backwards compatibility with existing tradition. It’s essentially impossible to switch our whole civilization over to base twelve at this point. From what I understand, in places without a highly developed positional number system, fractions for units were generally developed in an ad-hoc way, for convenience, whereas in places with a more entrenched base ten tradition (especially in East Asia where the “abacus” was made of beads on a fixed frame instead of a collection of loose pebbles on a board) fractional units were more often tenths. The metric system takes that tendency to an extreme. In general, the metric system is an example of building a system less well suited to particular use cases, but overall more cohesive and systematic. Since modern people are universally schooled in base ten positional arithmetic, the metric system becomes reasonably familiar and convenient.

nickserv 10y ago

The US system isn't bad because it's not base 10, it's bad because it's horribly inconsistent. Quick - how many inches in 1.25 miles?

sverige 10y ago
79,200. Why would you need to know that? Edit: This made me think about the scale of things you're measuring. Roads are generally best measured in miles, not yards, feet, or inches. Some things are better measured in yards (like football fields or concrete (cubic yards)). Some things are best measured in feet, and some things in inches. The avoirdupois system is human sized. The metric system is based on some inaccurate 18th century French calculation of the circumference of the earth, IIRC. Why would you care what your height is in relationship to the circumference of the earth? That never made sense to me. Rarely does it matter if you can convert from one unit to the other. The only exception I can think of is when doubling or halving a recipe - going from teaspoons to tablespoons or liquid ounces can be a pain.
- Veratyr 10y ago
  Maybe I have to cover a road with 11 inch long bricks and I need to know how many to buy? The problem is that although perhaps certain units may be good for measuring certain things, the things you use those measurements for will frequently involve things that use different units. To take your road example again, what if I want to find out how many revolutions it takes a wheel with a 4 foot circumference to travel a mile? What if I want to find out how many yard long strides it takes to go down a road? The metric units are interoperable. That's their big advantage.
matchagaucho 10y ago
Architects and Carpenters use inches and feet because they're constantly dividing by 2,3,4, and 6. Converting to miles is not practical.
MasterYoda 10y ago
Inconsistent is a good description. It feels like a rollercoaster... https://morganalyx.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/metric-system.jpg https://morganalyx.files.wordpress.com/2013/04/metric-system...

anotherevan 10y ago

And Betamax was vastly superior.

gmiller123456 10y ago

Your argument would make sense if our system were actually base 12, or if we actually worked in halves or thirds of feet. Or if we ever had a reason to convert feet to eggs, or feet to hours. No, the base changes for every unit of measurement. Inches are divided into 16ths, feet into 12ths, yards, into thirds, miles into 1760ths. Inches are the worst as the base changes depending on how accurate you want to be, or if the fraction can be simplified, 3/8ths 7/16ths, 15/32nds. And of course all of the numbers used to count them are base 10. The metric system uses base 10 all around. Not because we have 10 fingers, but because that's the system most widely used.