6 ms·

Anthony Burgess somewhere or other pointed out the superior divisibility of the old English system: 3,2, and 5 as prime factors for the pound, 3, 2, and 7 for t

by cafard 8y ago

Anthony Burgess somewhere or other pointed out the superior divisibility of the old English system: 3,2, and 5 as prime factors for the pound, 3, 2, and 7 for the guinea.

JoeAltmaier 8y ago
I've often thought, base 12 would have made a much better counting system.
- abakker 8y ago
  As a woodworker, this is one of my prime reasons for still liking inches. Of course, fractional inches are kind of terrible once you get past 16ths, but, that's what decimal inches are for! (As an aside, one of the great mistakes of standard measurements IMO is that we reduce all our fraction. the alternating 1/2,33/66,17/32,35/64,9/16, etc is awful. We could have just kept everything in 64ths and then just used the numerator.)
  - Jedd 8y ago
    > (As an aside, one of the great mistakes of standard measurements IMO is that we reduce all our fraction. the alternating 1/2,33/66,17/32,35/64,9/16, etc is awful. We could have just kept everything in 64ths and then just used the numerator.) This is what normal people do with metric / decimal. Everything's in thousands (/1000's) of a metre -- ie. millimetres, or mm. When you can no longer differentiate the notches on your rule ... you're accurate enough.
    - abakker 8y ago
      Nah, you buy a finer ruler! I also find myself doing a fair amount of machining, and one of the things I have to remind myself is that I don’t need .001” accuracy in wood.
      - Jedd 8y ago
        I hear you. When I'm working with a chainsaw I'm 'accurate' to within several millimetres. Through a tablesaw or bandsaw etc I'm closer to 1-2 millimetres accuracy. It's rare I need to get to thickenesser levels of accuracy (0.5 millimetres, say) ... but I usually work with more forgiving softer timbers. A friend of mine does some seriously precise metalwork - down to 'thousands of an inch' (he's English, but has lived in AU for some decades). It's beyond my realm, though the level of accuracy transcends measurement systems -- whether it's thousands of inches, or extra zeroes after the dot for fractions of a mm -- it's a matter of tooling, or, as I say, gradations on your rule!
        abakker 8y ago
        Yeah, consistency is really the important one. Almost none of my projects in wood are built "to spec". So, as long as the thickness is consistent between boards, the table will be flat, the joinery will match, etc. Conversely, in metal, pretty much 100% of my projects are built to a plan, since they tend to be parts of machinery/tools/jigs that need to be the reference surfaces. Oh, the money i've spent on measuring equipment. yeesh.
  - hprotagonist 8y ago
    I once obtained a ruler that was given in decimal feet. That was a _weird_ day.
    - abakker 8y ago
      I actually make and sell these, as well as rulers that are in decimal inches. They're handy for woodworkers or others that need to use multiple scales. Even weirder, I've made rulers that indicate pixels at the precise PPI density for MacBook pros, iPhones, etc, so that my graphic designer friend could hand sketch UI/UX elements to scale and see how they'd render.
    - tonyarkles 8y ago
      I bought a 3-pack of tape measures at Home Depot several years ago, being delighted that they were much cheaper than normal. Sure enough, first time I go to use one I discover it's in decimal feet. That, too, was a weird day. I'm in Canada, so it's not unusual for some things to be in feet/inches and some to be in meters/centimeters/etc. But my brain positively melted when it couldn't reconcile the incongruity of those tape measures.
- Jedd 8y ago
  At an abstract level -- that is to say, assuming an actual base-12 numbering system -- this may well be the case. Unfortunately it's a claim often made by people who are preemptively nostalgic for imperial measurements, while simultaneously addicted to base-10 number systems, but who can't quite get past the incompatibilities of the two combined. Beyond that problem there seems to be an underlying belief that using decimal points, and/or accepting any kind of rounding, is some kind of unforgivable concession.
- JepZ 8y ago
  With the downside of not having enough fingers to use it ;-)
  - zeveb 8y ago
    You can count from zero to twelve one the knuckles of each finger, using your thumb as an index. Easy-peasy. Combined, that means you can get from 0 to 156 (12*12 + 12). Much better than the 10 one can manage simply by holding up fingers.

by cafard 8y ago

Anthony Burgess somewhere or other pointed out the superior divisibility of the old English system: 3,2, and 5 as prime factors for the pound, 3, 2, and 7 for the guinea.

JoeAltmaier 8y ago

I've often thought, base 12 would have made a much better counting system.

abakker 8y ago
As a woodworker, this is one of my prime reasons for still liking inches. Of course, fractional inches are kind of terrible once you get past 16ths, but, that's what decimal inches are for! (As an aside, one of the great mistakes of standard measurements IMO is that we reduce all our fraction. the alternating 1/2,33/66,17/32,35/64,9/16, etc is awful. We could have just kept everything in 64ths and then just used the numerator.)
- Jedd 8y ago
  > (As an aside, one of the great mistakes of standard measurements IMO is that we reduce all our fraction. the alternating 1/2,33/66,17/32,35/64,9/16, etc is awful. We could have just kept everything in 64ths and then just used the numerator.) This is what normal people do with metric / decimal. Everything's in thousands (/1000's) of a metre -- ie. millimetres, or mm. When you can no longer differentiate the notches on your rule ... you're accurate enough.
  - abakker 8y ago
    Nah, you buy a finer ruler! I also find myself doing a fair amount of machining, and one of the things I have to remind myself is that I don’t need .001” accuracy in wood.
    - Jedd 8y ago
      I hear you. When I'm working with a chainsaw I'm 'accurate' to within several millimetres. Through a tablesaw or bandsaw etc I'm closer to 1-2 millimetres accuracy. It's rare I need to get to thickenesser levels of accuracy (0.5 millimetres, say) ... but I usually work with more forgiving softer timbers. A friend of mine does some seriously precise metalwork - down to 'thousands of an inch' (he's English, but has lived in AU for some decades). It's beyond my realm, though the level of accuracy transcends measurement systems -- whether it's thousands of inches, or extra zeroes after the dot for fractions of a mm -- it's a matter of tooling, or, as I say, gradations on your rule!
      - abakker 8y ago
        Yeah, consistency is really the important one. Almost none of my projects in wood are built "to spec". So, as long as the thickness is consistent between boards, the table will be flat, the joinery will match, etc. Conversely, in metal, pretty much 100% of my projects are built to a plan, since they tend to be parts of machinery/tools/jigs that need to be the reference surfaces. Oh, the money i've spent on measuring equipment. yeesh.
- hprotagonist 8y ago
  I once obtained a ruler that was given in decimal feet. That was a _weird_ day.
  - abakker 8y ago
    I actually make and sell these, as well as rulers that are in decimal inches. They're handy for woodworkers or others that need to use multiple scales. Even weirder, I've made rulers that indicate pixels at the precise PPI density for MacBook pros, iPhones, etc, so that my graphic designer friend could hand sketch UI/UX elements to scale and see how they'd render.
  - tonyarkles 8y ago
    I bought a 3-pack of tape measures at Home Depot several years ago, being delighted that they were much cheaper than normal. Sure enough, first time I go to use one I discover it's in decimal feet. That, too, was a weird day. I'm in Canada, so it's not unusual for some things to be in feet/inches and some to be in meters/centimeters/etc. But my brain positively melted when it couldn't reconcile the incongruity of those tape measures.
Jedd 8y ago
At an abstract level -- that is to say, assuming an actual base-12 numbering system -- this may well be the case. Unfortunately it's a claim often made by people who are preemptively nostalgic for imperial measurements, while simultaneously addicted to base-10 number systems, but who can't quite get past the incompatibilities of the two combined. Beyond that problem there seems to be an underlying belief that using decimal points, and/or accepting any kind of rounding, is some kind of unforgivable concession.
JepZ 8y ago
With the downside of not having enough fingers to use it ;-)
- zeveb 8y ago
  You can count from zero to twelve one the knuckles of each finger, using your thumb as an index. Easy-peasy. Combined, that means you can get from 0 to 156 (12*12 + 12). Much better than the 10 one can manage simply by holding up fingers.