One observation that I'd like to share is that in the olden days, people not only used a plethora of units for things (like in the UK 'pounds' for weight in gen

One observation that I'd like to share is that in the olden days, people not only used a plethora of units for things (like in the UK 'pounds' for weight in general but 'stones' when weighing people, &cpp), the also like to use fractions like 1/2 or 2/3 when dividing units. Both observations seem to hold true from ancient Egypt and Babylonia all the way to Europe into the 19th and, in places, the 21st centuries. The opposing view is that we'd be better off using only powers of one single factor—10—for all commensurable units, and prefer decimal fractions for calculations. I've frequently seen people argue in favor of the imperial system arguing that one-third, one-fourth, three-eighths of an inch is so much more natural than, say, 0.5m, 0.33m and so on. I have hardly to point out that this perceived advantage (that I believe in to a degree) breaks down as soon as you want to add and multiply: what's 2 times 3/8ths plus 1/3rd? When calculations increase in complexity, using only fractions of a single base and its power—and using a base that is already the base of the number system that you think and count in—takes a lot of incidental complexity out of the system.