6 ms·

120 is divisible by a lot of numbers, which is convenient for many calculations. There's a similar reasoning behind 24 hour days, 60 minute hours, and 360 degre

120 is divisible by a lot of numbers, which is convenient for many calculations. There's a similar reasoning behind 24 hour days, 60 minute hours, and 360 degrees in a circle. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_composite_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Highly_composite_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal

zz865 6y ago
Nah we should go metric on time. 20 new-hours a day, 100 new-minutes per new-hour.
- astrea 6y ago
  And I thought time libraries were a mess already...
- gerikson 6y ago
  Bring back the French Revolutionary clock!
- chriswarbo 6y ago
  The existing system is perfectly rational, although using base-60 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal ) rather than base-10 (decimal). We can use the ideas of metric without base-10 (see http://chriswarbo.net/blog/2020-05-22-metric_red_herring.html http://chriswarbo.net/blog/2020-05-22-metric_red_herring.htm... ); and I would argue that base-60 is actually better, since it has many factors (see http://chriswarbo.net/blog/2020-05-22-improving_our_units.html http://chriswarbo.net/blog/2020-05-22-improving_our_units.ht... ). It's actually illuminating to trace the linguistic history: - The 'hour' used to be the base unit for time - Smaller intervals were called 'small parts', where a 'small part' is 1/60 of an hour (the sexagesimal equivalent to a 'decihour') - Even smaller intervals were called 'second small parts', defined as 1/60 of a 'small part' - Even smaller intervals were called 'third small parts', defined as 1/60 of a 'second small part' - And so on This was done by Latin speakers, whose phrase for 'small part' is "pars minuta". Hence 1/60 of an hour is a "pars minuta" ('minute' in English), and 1/60 of a pars minuta is a "pars minuta secunda" ('second' in English). Metric/SI units take the "second" to be their base unit, and give us shorthand multipliers like "kilo". Tracing this back, we find that a kilosecond is 1000/3600 of an hour! Likewise we don't tend to use thirds or fourths anymore, instead using multipliers like "milli" and "nano". I'm not aware of any shorthand multipliers for sexagesimal. In my blog post linked above I suggest “prota” for x60 and “defter” for x3600, so we could use "protasecond" instead of minute and "defersecond" instead of hour (I also suggest abbreviating second to "sec", since it's no longer used as an ordinal number ("second small"))
Waterluvian 6y ago
I laughed a lot at imperial until I did a lot of woodworking. 12 is divisible evenly by 1,2,3,4,6,12. What a great number. Now I only laugh a little.
- oh_sigh 6y ago
  I'm a lifelong imperial-ist but switched to metric after getting into woodworking. It was too tempting to do math in my head like "This piece is 13 & 3/8ths, I need to subtract 13/32nds and then find the midpoint of that..." and then screw it all up at some point. Now it is just "This piece is 340mm, I need to subtract 9mm and find the midpoint: 116mm": relatively easy peasy.
  - a1369209993 6y ago
    That's not a problem with imperial (13+3/8 mm and 13/32 mm have the same problem); it's a problem with fractions (especially 'proper' fractions, which should never be used for anything ever, since they combine all the downsides of both decimals and rational numbers, with no benefit). Normalize everything to, say, 1/64 inch units and "This piece is 856/64in, I need to subtract 26/64in and then find the midpoint of that: (856-26)/2 = 415, so it's 415/64in." works fine.
    - namanyayg 6y ago
      Are the conversions to normalised proper fractions and back to conventional improper fractions easier to do in the head or should one just use mm?
    - chriswarbo 6y ago
      > Normalize everything to, say, 1/64 inch units If you "normalize everything" you get the metric system (up to a scaling factor): all distances are expressed in metres, all energies in Joules, all forces in Newtons, all pressures in Pascals, etc. Note that the latter are just naming conventions (for kgm^2/s^2, kgm/s^2 and kg/ms^2, respectively). This can lead to some unwieldy numbers, e.g. "turn left after four million 1/64 inches", so naming conventions are often used, like "mega" for "million".
nicoburns 6y ago
Seems like the best of all world would be a do-decimal (12-based) based system of units along with do-decimal notation and two extra digits to notate it. But I can't see us switching any time soon!
fleabitdev 6y ago
I'm developing a big-pixel retro platformer game. Rather than the traditional power-of-two tile sizes, I ended up going for 36x36 tiles. It's much easier to draw repeating patterns when tiles can be evenly divided into halves, thirds, quarters, sixths, and so on.
- nine_k 6y ago
  Would fit neatly to hardware from 1960s which was often 36-bit.

zz865 6y ago

Nah we should go metric on time. 20 new-hours a day, 100 new-minutes per new-hour.

astrea 6y ago
And I thought time libraries were a mess already...
gerikson 6y ago
Bring back the French Revolutionary clock!
chriswarbo 6y ago
The existing system is perfectly rational, although using base-60 ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sexagesimal ) rather than base-10 (decimal). We can use the ideas of metric without base-10 (see http://chriswarbo.net/blog/2020-05-22-metric_red_herring.html http://chriswarbo.net/blog/2020-05-22-metric_red_herring.htm... ); and I would argue that base-60 is actually better, since it has many factors (see http://chriswarbo.net/blog/2020-05-22-improving_our_units.html http://chriswarbo.net/blog/2020-05-22-improving_our_units.ht... ). It's actually illuminating to trace the linguistic history: - The 'hour' used to be the base unit for time - Smaller intervals were called 'small parts', where a 'small part' is 1/60 of an hour (the sexagesimal equivalent to a 'decihour') - Even smaller intervals were called 'second small parts', defined as 1/60 of a 'small part' - Even smaller intervals were called 'third small parts', defined as 1/60 of a 'second small part' - And so on This was done by Latin speakers, whose phrase for 'small part' is "pars minuta". Hence 1/60 of an hour is a "pars minuta" ('minute' in English), and 1/60 of a pars minuta is a "pars minuta secunda" ('second' in English). Metric/SI units take the "second" to be their base unit, and give us shorthand multipliers like "kilo". Tracing this back, we find that a kilosecond is 1000/3600 of an hour! Likewise we don't tend to use thirds or fourths anymore, instead using multipliers like "milli" and "nano". I'm not aware of any shorthand multipliers for sexagesimal. In my blog post linked above I suggest “prota” for x60 and “defter” for x3600, so we could use "protasecond" instead of minute and "defersecond" instead of hour (I also suggest abbreviating second to "sec", since it's no longer used as an ordinal number ("second small"))

Waterluvian 6y ago

I laughed a lot at imperial until I did a lot of woodworking. 12 is divisible evenly by 1,2,3,4,6,12. What a great number. Now I only laugh a little.

oh_sigh 6y ago
I'm a lifelong imperial-ist but switched to metric after getting into woodworking. It was too tempting to do math in my head like "This piece is 13 & 3/8ths, I need to subtract 13/32nds and then find the midpoint of that..." and then screw it all up at some point. Now it is just "This piece is 340mm, I need to subtract 9mm and find the midpoint: 116mm": relatively easy peasy.
- a1369209993 6y ago
  That's not a problem with imperial (13+3/8 mm and 13/32 mm have the same problem); it's a problem with fractions (especially 'proper' fractions, which should never be used for anything ever, since they combine all the downsides of both decimals and rational numbers, with no benefit). Normalize everything to, say, 1/64 inch units and "This piece is 856/64in, I need to subtract 26/64in and then find the midpoint of that: (856-26)/2 = 415, so it's 415/64in." works fine.
  - namanyayg 6y ago
    Are the conversions to normalised proper fractions and back to conventional improper fractions easier to do in the head or should one just use mm?
  - chriswarbo 6y ago
    > Normalize everything to, say, 1/64 inch units If you "normalize everything" you get the metric system (up to a scaling factor): all distances are expressed in metres, all energies in Joules, all forces in Newtons, all pressures in Pascals, etc. Note that the latter are just naming conventions (for kgm^2/s^2, kgm/s^2 and kg/ms^2, respectively). This can lead to some unwieldy numbers, e.g. "turn left after four million 1/64 inches", so naming conventions are often used, like "mega" for "million".

nicoburns 6y ago

Seems like the best of all world would be a do-decimal (12-based) based system of units along with do-decimal notation and two extra digits to notate it. But I can't see us switching any time soon!

fleabitdev 6y ago

I'm developing a big-pixel retro platformer game. Rather than the traditional power-of-two tile sizes, I ended up going for 36x36 tiles. It's much easier to draw repeating patterns when tiles can be evenly divided into halves, thirds, quarters, sixths, and so on.

nine_k 6y ago
Would fit neatly to hardware from 1960s which was often 36-bit.