f0xx Posted December 14, 2012 Report Share Posted December 14, 2012 REAL TITLE: Metric vs Standard (Imperial) Measurement System (made a type in the title and won't let me edit it) Those of you that know me, will know that I am an engineer by education and job and since I live in Europe, we use the Metric Measurement System here and since my work involves daily usage of a lot of numbers, when I have to work with foreign (US) customers, it becomes a great pain having to convert all the inches into millimeters and it gets even worse when converting taps and threads. I've griped not once and twice about the "silly american system", but a video I watched today made me research a bit and think about who is actually silly... the Americans or the Europeans (namely the French), and I've found that the standard system is actually the predecessor and older than the metric one and actually, from a mathematical point of view, it seems a bit better to use the standard one. [edit] Sorry about the typo in the title Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pali Posted December 14, 2012 Report Share Posted December 14, 2012 *shrugs* Not a bad idea, though in Latin-descent alphabets the E and X symbols end up pulling double-duty as letters and as numbers, which isn't what I'd call ideal but would usually be of little trouble due to context. Also, he's only talking numerical systems, not measurement systems... the Standard System doesn't follow a base 12 pattern of measurements except when dealing with inches to feet. Feet in a yard, yards in a mile, ounces in a pound, pints in a gallon... none of it's done in factors of 12, and few even follow the same pattern as the others - despite the name, there's nothing standard about it. The main reason I prefer metric is that it does follow the decimal system pattern - the level of measurement changes always in factors of ten, and the only change in the word you're using is the prefix. Also, one only needs to look at how qwerty keyboards for an example of how an established system isn't always usurped by a better one. P.S. I also don't buy his statement that base 12 is more natural and historically used - numerical systems differed from culture to culture. A bit of research isn't finding me any examples of cultures that used one. Rome, India, China, the Middle East... all these developed decimal systems, and while Wikipedia's got sourced examples of cultures that used base 4, 5, 8, 15, 20, 24, and 60 systems, the only claim of a group using a duodecimal system lacks a citation and references "some Nigerians", which does not impress me. So I have to label that claim BS. Also, while he's right that writing 1/3 as .4 is cleaner than .333 repeating... he neglects to mention that 1/5 becomes .2497 repeating. I'm not sure the trade gains us much in that account. Frankly, this guy stinks of used car salesman to me at this point... BS claim of historical significance, focusing only on the upsides and ignoring the downsides... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
f0xx Posted December 14, 2012 Author Report Share Posted December 14, 2012 Doesn't mean it can't be changed to work in 12's though. The imperial system is an old one indeed, and needs an update, but the use of 12's instead of 10's starts to seem more logical the more I think about it. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pali Posted December 14, 2012 Report Share Posted December 14, 2012 Read my edit. Edit: Essentially, the "gain" in ease of writing fractions doesn't really exist - you trade 1/3 being .333 repeating for 1/5 being .2497 repeating, 1/6 as .667 and 1/10 as 0.12497 with the last 4 digits repeating, and 1/7 is ugly in both. Personally, I don't find .2497 being a fraction as an improvement on .333 being a fraction - the latter's a lot simpler in my book. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
egreir Posted December 14, 2012 Report Share Posted December 14, 2012 Random caveat....I used to drive my middle school teachers crazy trying to argue that 1/3 can never truly equal .333 repeating Carry on... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Pali Posted December 14, 2012 Report Share Posted December 14, 2012 Random fun with numbers, using ellipses to represent a repeating digit: x=0.999... 10x=9.999... 10x-x=9.999... - 0.999... 9x=9 x=1 1=0.999... Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
egreir Posted December 14, 2012 Report Share Posted December 14, 2012 Lies. Just like when they tried to tell me the only vowels were a i e o and u and only places people and objects were nouns! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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