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Base 60 (like the Babylonians and Sumerians) is actually a terrific base for daily use. Base 12 is similarly good, and more functional. 60 and 12 are both divi
by chimeracoder 2y ago
Base 60 (like the Babylonians and Sumerians) is actually a terrific base for daily use. Base 12 is similarly good, and more functional.
60 and 12 are both divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6, which are some of the most common divisions that people need in daily life.
Base 60 has the additional advantage of being divisible by 5, 10, 15, and 20 as well. Note that we still use bases 60 and 24 for our timekeeping, and it's extremely convenient to be able to divide up the hour or day evenly into these chunks.
The metric system is great for scientific purposes, but the properties that make it good for scientific use are not terribly relevant to household or daily use.
- timbit42 2y ago30 is also divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6.
- chimeracoder 2y ago> 30 is also divisible by 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6. 30 is not divisible by 4.
- jimmaswell 2y agoReal base 60 would be way too many glyphs.
- devnullbrain 2y agoLess than 1% of what Chinese has
- jimmaswell 2y agoNot an example of a sane system.
- makeitshine 2y agoNot for numbers. 零一二三四五六七八九十百千萬億 is all you need to get into the billions. It's not as practical for computation, though.
- devnullbrain 2y agoThere are people who know more Chinese glyphs than just the numbers, implying it is possible to learn 60 glyphs.
- mcmoor 2y agoI don't think there's anything in the metric system that actually requires using base 10. Anything will work the same with base 12 or any other base. The only thing we need is consistency, which is the hardest part in this matter.
- Ajedi32 2y agoIs a kilogram 1,000 grams, or 12^3 grams? Is a cubic centimeter 1 ml, or 12^-3 liters? But yes, having a standard everyone agrees on is way more important than how well thought out the standard is.
- timeon 2y agoBase 10 is not bad for day to day use because you can just round there. Metric system is especially good in cooking because you do not need n ways to measure thing. Just one kitchen scale.