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This is why the metric system is stupid. Now, last time I said this I was downvoted, but just because base 10 is convenient academically doesn't mean it is a g

This is why the metric system is stupid. Now, last time I said this I was downvoted, but just because base 10 is convenient academically doesn't mean it is a great idea in day to day life. The metric system is great for doing science but totally annoying for doing carpentry, for example. Centimeters are generally not a convenient size, and something as simple as dividing a piece of wood in to thirds is unnecessarily imprecise.

alricb 12y ago
Well, they did think about making metric base-12, but in the hurry of the revolution, they left that out. It WOULD be more useful with base 12. However, the nice water/gravity correpondence is really nice in practice (1 kg = ~ the mass of 1 L of water, 1 L = 1 dm cube). For instance you can easily estimate the weigth of something given its metric dimensions and the density of the material relative to water.
- kps 12y ago
  > However, the nice water/gravity correpondence is really nice in practice One fluid once of water weighs (approximately) one ounce.
- hackuser 12y ago
  1 U.S. pint of water weighs 1 pound. "A pint is a pound, all the world round." That's the saying, at least, but in the UK a pint, what Yanks call an Imperial pint, is 20 oz and weighs 1.25 lbs: "A pint of pure water weighs a pound and a quarter".
- Florin_Andrei 12y ago
  > the nice water/gravity correpondence Also: 1 atm (normal atmospheric pressure) is 1 kg / cm^2. Or the pressure of 10 meters of water (a column of water 10 meters tall, to be precise). 1kg of mass under normal gravity generates a gravitational force of ~10N. It's super-easy to do everyday physics in your head, no calculator required, in the metric system.
- echaozh 12y ago
  If you make the units base-12, leaving the numerical system base-10, it will be really inconvenient. How much is 12^4? 10^4 is obvious, even if this 10 is a decimal 12. Base 2 is successful partly due to the fact that 2^10 is very close to 1000, which matches the kilo, mega scheme. Edit: asterisks are for formatting, easier to use ^.
  - moron4hire 12y ago
    That's kind of the whole crux of the problem. It's all just culture. Some mathematicians like to act like math is a universal language that transcends culture, but ultimately it's impossible for a human to communicate anything without the basis of culture, so that dirty, ol' not-hard-science has to creep in somewhere. Or else what is the use of it, if you can't talk about it? If we were more focused as a culture on a base-12 system, we'd be using a base-12 numbering system as well, in which case 12^4 would be written as "10000", leaving us to ask the crazy base-10 proponents just how easy they expect it would be to represent 10^4 ("5954" in base 12). Base-2's popularity has nothing to do with 2^10 ~= 10^3, except where it serves hard drive manufacturers to sow uncertainty around the difference between Mibi- and Mega- bytes. Otherwise, it's just happy circumstance. Base-2 works because binary computers were ready for work before trinary computers were developed. The numbers are only useful because we've decided as a culture that they should be so. There is nothing sacrosanct about the number 10 (or 12 for that matter). As all things, mathematics is only useful insofar as it is useful. We get to choose the way we abstract reality. It's kind of one of the things that makes us human.
deleted 12y ago
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phaemon 12y ago
> and something as simple as dividing a piece of wood in to thirds is unnecessarily imprecise. Nonsense. It's dead easy. If you have a 120cm piece of wood, one third of it is 40cm. Now, let's try that in Imperial. 120cm is 3 foot, 11 2/10 inches. How on earth would you go about dividing 3' 11 2/10" into thirds?! I'll leave you to think about it... ;)
- dmckeon 12y ago
  A carpenter in the US is unlikely to measure wood in 10ths of an inch. I make 120cm to be about 47.2441 inches - or almost 3 feet, 11 1/4 inches. Before we quibble over decimal precision, how wide is the saw blade? Anyone in need of serious wood-butchering arithmetic should find the instructions that should come with an L-shaped carpenter's framing square, and learn what all the various scales can be used for - it's like a slide rule for wooden construction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_square https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_square
- ninjaplease 12y ago
  I was going to explain why you're a dick, but then I realized you already know you're a dick. Nevertheless, it bears repeating: you're a dick.
brc 12y ago
Err, I do occasional woodwork, and working with imperial measurements is a nightmare. Any serious carpenter will always work in mm, anyway.
grecy 12y ago
I've lived in a couple of different metric countries, and built many things in my life, worked on cars, etc. etc. Nobody uses centimeters. Ever. It's all millimeters, even when it's a round number, i.e. nobody says "Mark it at 10cm", they say "Mark it at 100 mil(limeters)". It's not worth trying to cut many things to an accuracy greater than 1mm, so that's a fine enough "smallest" unit.

alricb 12y ago

Well, they did think about making metric base-12, but in the hurry of the revolution, they left that out. It WOULD be more useful with base 12. However, the nice water/gravity correpondence is really nice in practice (1 kg = ~ the mass of 1 L of water, 1 L = 1 dm cube). For instance you can easily estimate the weigth of something given its metric dimensions and the density of the material relative to water.

kps 12y ago
> However, the nice water/gravity correpondence is really nice in practice One fluid once of water weighs (approximately) one ounce.
hackuser 12y ago
1 U.S. pint of water weighs 1 pound. "A pint is a pound, all the world round." That's the saying, at least, but in the UK a pint, what Yanks call an Imperial pint, is 20 oz and weighs 1.25 lbs: "A pint of pure water weighs a pound and a quarter".
Florin_Andrei 12y ago
> the nice water/gravity correpondence Also: 1 atm (normal atmospheric pressure) is 1 kg / cm^2. Or the pressure of 10 meters of water (a column of water 10 meters tall, to be precise). 1kg of mass under normal gravity generates a gravitational force of ~10N. It's super-easy to do everyday physics in your head, no calculator required, in the metric system.
echaozh 12y ago
If you make the units base-12, leaving the numerical system base-10, it will be really inconvenient. How much is 12^4? 10^4 is obvious, even if this 10 is a decimal 12. Base 2 is successful partly due to the fact that 2^10 is very close to 1000, which matches the kilo, mega scheme. Edit: asterisks are for formatting, easier to use ^.
- moron4hire 12y ago
  That's kind of the whole crux of the problem. It's all just culture. Some mathematicians like to act like math is a universal language that transcends culture, but ultimately it's impossible for a human to communicate anything without the basis of culture, so that dirty, ol' not-hard-science has to creep in somewhere. Or else what is the use of it, if you can't talk about it? If we were more focused as a culture on a base-12 system, we'd be using a base-12 numbering system as well, in which case 12^4 would be written as "10000", leaving us to ask the crazy base-10 proponents just how easy they expect it would be to represent 10^4 ("5954" in base 12). Base-2's popularity has nothing to do with 2^10 ~= 10^3, except where it serves hard drive manufacturers to sow uncertainty around the difference between Mibi- and Mega- bytes. Otherwise, it's just happy circumstance. Base-2 works because binary computers were ready for work before trinary computers were developed. The numbers are only useful because we've decided as a culture that they should be so. There is nothing sacrosanct about the number 10 (or 12 for that matter). As all things, mathematics is only useful insofar as it is useful. We get to choose the way we abstract reality. It's kind of one of the things that makes us human.

deleted 12y ago

[deleted]

phaemon 12y ago

> and something as simple as dividing a piece of wood in to thirds is unnecessarily imprecise. Nonsense. It's dead easy. If you have a 120cm piece of wood, one third of it is 40cm. Now, let's try that in Imperial. 120cm is 3 foot, 11 2/10 inches. How on earth would you go about dividing 3' 11 2/10" into thirds?! I'll leave you to think about it... ;)

dmckeon 12y ago
A carpenter in the US is unlikely to measure wood in 10ths of an inch. I make 120cm to be about 47.2441 inches - or almost 3 feet, 11 1/4 inches. Before we quibble over decimal precision, how wide is the saw blade? Anyone in need of serious wood-butchering arithmetic should find the instructions that should come with an L-shaped carpenter's framing square, and learn what all the various scales can be used for - it's like a slide rule for wooden construction. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_square https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Steel_square
ninjaplease 12y ago
I was going to explain why you're a dick, but then I realized you already know you're a dick. Nevertheless, it bears repeating: you're a dick.

brc 12y ago

Err, I do occasional woodwork, and working with imperial measurements is a nightmare. Any serious carpenter will always work in mm, anyway.

grecy 12y ago

I've lived in a couple of different metric countries, and built many things in my life, worked on cars, etc. etc. Nobody uses centimeters. Ever. It's all millimeters, even when it's a round number, i.e. nobody says "Mark it at 10cm", they say "Mark it at 100 mil(limeters)". It's not worth trying to cut many things to an accuracy greater than 1mm, so that's a fine enough "smallest" unit.