4 ms·

Sorry but i fail to see how it's handy. To stay with thr egg pack unit, it's much easier to say i want 7 eggs rather than a 0.58 of pack (not even sure it's rig

by boudin 6y ago

Sorry but i fail to see how it's handy. To stay with thr egg pack unit, it's much easier to say i want 7 eggs rather than a 0.58 of pack (not even sure it's right in egg/inches). Even this i find it much more convenient in 10s. A pack of 10 eggs? You can easily express any content (0.1, 0.2, 0.3...) Move to the lower unit (move the coma). A quarter of an egg in egg packs? 0.025 Want to move in the egg unit? 0.25 Please prove me wrong but i fail to see how it's easier in 12th, when using a decimal number system.

mattkrause 6y ago
The advantage is that all of those divisions are clearly marked on the ruler, so it’s easy to align your line/cut with it. In contrast, cutting a 10cm thing in thirds or quarters requires estimating the point 0.33 or 0.25 of the way between marks, which is perceptually harder.
- boudin 6y ago
  But then everything has to be based on those fractions, instead of just using the lower unit directly. I guess it's just a different approach.
  - ZiiS 6y ago
    In the phisical world you much more often want to fit three things in a space/cut material into four equal bits.
    - boudin 6y ago
      I never had issues with cm/mm honestly. And half a milimeter is always a precision hard to reach with home hand tools, so the need to have 0.33 milimeters on a ruler is not there. Tools that reach that precision are in micrometers.
    - mattkrause 6y ago
      In a similar vein, degrees are conceptually a bit weird, but make it easy to spread things around a circle in many commonly-used configurations.
- overkalix 6y ago
  And cutting 3.93701 inches in thirds is somehow easier? Even with 4in, you end up with 1.33 inches. Not very different from 3.33cm is it? You're just taking arbitrary numbers that are easier to operate with using the imperial system. The metric system is superior because most numbers are easier to operate and measures in fractions of ten.
  - mattkrause 6y ago
    But that's exactly the point--historically, you wouldn't cut 3.93701 inches. You don't have the precision to do it nor do you have any real reason not to stick with "round" numbers or close enough. Rough carpentry (e.g., framing a house) is often only accurate to a 1/2" or so; very fine furniture might go down to a 1/32rd. Note that machinists, who do want that sort of precision and can achieve it, mostly work in metric or metric-lite ('mils'=1/1000s of an inch).
kortex 6y ago
> Please prove me wrong but i fail to see how it's easier in 12th, when using a decimal number system. It's not. You have to have a base 12 "decimal" system (dozenal or duodecimal). A half is 0.6, third is 0.4, quarter is 0.3, a sixth is 0.2, an eighth is 0.15, and a twelveth is 0.1. Eight eggs is 0.8 of a dozen, 0.08 of a gross, or 8 "pg", per-gross, akin to per-centum. The mistake was adopting decimal, not dozenal.
dahfizz 6y ago
You're coming at the problem from a metric point of view. Your instinct is to immediately convert into decimal point numbers, but the strength of the base 12 system is in fractions. Its very easy to visualize and measure one half, one third, one quarter of something. Humans in their daily life don't come across a situation where they need 0.2 of something. It is much more natural to think of halves and thirds. Milk (as an example of imperial liquid measure) is another good example. Nobody looks at a gallon of milk and says "boy I wish I could only buy 0.7 of that". The brain is just wired to think of halving and doubling, so we have quarts which are 1/4 gallons, and pints which are 1/2 quarts. For another example, You never hear about people "0.7x" a recipe. People halve or double a recipe, and imperial measures make that easy to do. I like the phrase: Imperial units are for humans, SI units are for scientists. This is why I prefer the Fahrenheit temperature scale. The Celsius scale is much more "concrete" in that it has a physical basis for degree 0 and 100, but that doesn't matter for humans. I never have to relate temperature in terms of boiling and freezing water. In Fahrenheit, 0 is "really cold" and 100 is "really hot". It's arbitrary, but more human friendly.
- Stratoscope 6y ago
  There is another human advantage to Fahrenheit: the degrees are more precise. One degree Fahrenheit is a noticeable but small difference. One degree Celsius is 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, a much bigger difference. You're practically forced to use half degrees, which works but is ugly. If the SI people could have broken with the idea that everything must be a strict power of 10, they could have used 200 degrees instead of 100 and had much more human-friendly units.
  - boudin 6y ago
    If I'm not mistaken the base unit for temperature in the SI system is the Kelvin, not Celsius.
- JdeBP 6y ago
  It's not terribly self-consistent to talk about base 12 (which is not what the old systems in fact used) being strong and then talking about the intuitiveness of 100 Fahrenheit in almost the same breath. (-:

by boudin 6y ago

mattkrause 6y ago

The advantage is that all of those divisions are clearly marked on the ruler, so it’s easy to align your line/cut with it. In contrast, cutting a 10cm thing in thirds or quarters requires estimating the point 0.33 or 0.25 of the way between marks, which is perceptually harder.

boudin 6y ago
But then everything has to be based on those fractions, instead of just using the lower unit directly. I guess it's just a different approach.
- ZiiS 6y ago
  In the phisical world you much more often want to fit three things in a space/cut material into four equal bits.
  - boudin 6y ago
    I never had issues with cm/mm honestly. And half a milimeter is always a precision hard to reach with home hand tools, so the need to have 0.33 milimeters on a ruler is not there. Tools that reach that precision are in micrometers.
  - mattkrause 6y ago
    In a similar vein, degrees are conceptually a bit weird, but make it easy to spread things around a circle in many commonly-used configurations.
overkalix 6y ago
And cutting 3.93701 inches in thirds is somehow easier? Even with 4in, you end up with 1.33 inches. Not very different from 3.33cm is it? You're just taking arbitrary numbers that are easier to operate with using the imperial system. The metric system is superior because most numbers are easier to operate and measures in fractions of ten.
- mattkrause 6y ago
  But that's exactly the point--historically, you wouldn't cut 3.93701 inches. You don't have the precision to do it nor do you have any real reason not to stick with "round" numbers or close enough. Rough carpentry (e.g., framing a house) is often only accurate to a 1/2" or so; very fine furniture might go down to a 1/32rd. Note that machinists, who do want that sort of precision and can achieve it, mostly work in metric or metric-lite ('mils'=1/1000s of an inch).

kortex 6y ago

> Please prove me wrong but i fail to see how it's easier in 12th, when using a decimal number system. It's not. You have to have a base 12 "decimal" system (dozenal or duodecimal). A half is 0.6, third is 0.4, quarter is 0.3, a sixth is 0.2, an eighth is 0.15, and a twelveth is 0.1. Eight eggs is 0.8 of a dozen, 0.08 of a gross, or 8 "pg", per-gross, akin to per-centum. The mistake was adopting decimal, not dozenal.

dahfizz 6y ago

You're coming at the problem from a metric point of view. Your instinct is to immediately convert into decimal point numbers, but the strength of the base 12 system is in fractions. Its very easy to visualize and measure one half, one third, one quarter of something. Humans in their daily life don't come across a situation where they need 0.2 of something. It is much more natural to think of halves and thirds. Milk (as an example of imperial liquid measure) is another good example. Nobody looks at a gallon of milk and says "boy I wish I could only buy 0.7 of that". The brain is just wired to think of halving and doubling, so we have quarts which are 1/4 gallons, and pints which are 1/2 quarts. For another example, You never hear about people "0.7x" a recipe. People halve or double a recipe, and imperial measures make that easy to do. I like the phrase: Imperial units are for humans, SI units are for scientists. This is why I prefer the Fahrenheit temperature scale. The Celsius scale is much more "concrete" in that it has a physical basis for degree 0 and 100, but that doesn't matter for humans. I never have to relate temperature in terms of boiling and freezing water. In Fahrenheit, 0 is "really cold" and 100 is "really hot". It's arbitrary, but more human friendly.

Stratoscope 6y ago
There is another human advantage to Fahrenheit: the degrees are more precise. One degree Fahrenheit is a noticeable but small difference. One degree Celsius is 1.8 degrees Fahrenheit, a much bigger difference. You're practically forced to use half degrees, which works but is ugly. If the SI people could have broken with the idea that everything must be a strict power of 10, they could have used 200 degrees instead of 100 and had much more human-friendly units.
- boudin 6y ago
  If I'm not mistaken the base unit for temperature in the SI system is the Kelvin, not Celsius.
JdeBP 6y ago
It's not terribly self-consistent to talk about base 12 (which is not what the old systems in fact used) being strong and then talking about the intuitiveness of 100 Fahrenheit in almost the same breath. (-: