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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 s
by 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 agoThere 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 agoIf I'm not mistaken the base unit for temperature in the SI system is the Kelvin, not Celsius.
- JdeBP 6y agoIt'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. (-:
- dahfizz 6y agoWhy not? The use case is different: I have never in my life needed to do quick mental math regarding temperatures. Base 12 is great for quick mental math. Both the fact that imperial uses base 12 for some units and the fact that Fahrenheit is centered around the human experience of temperature support my larger point that imperial units are more ergonomic.
- boudin 6y agoWe really think differently then :D I definitely don't think about fractions but adapt the unit to my needs. I use fractions to get to what i need, but the same way i would add, multiply and substract. I don't relate at all to the Farenheit scale. You can give whatever number, it just doesn't talk to me at all. The Celsius one does though. This is not a matter of a unit being better than another, but what we're used to.