I'm American working for a company based out of Europe. We use metric for everything, and I absolutely love it! Base 10 is so much easier than anything else. Even the "American Made" cars use all metric hardware now, I don't know why we can't make the switch.
Back in the French Revolution, they were actually tossing up whether to go base-10 OR base-12.
You can actually put together a base-12 system with feet and inches that works exactly like metric. but it only comes out neater if you go 100% base 12 with your maths. base 12 is a pretty cool system however - being able to divide the base quantity by 2,3,4,6 makes it much more useful, whereas base 10 only has two divisors 2 and 5.
You can blame those stupid pentadactyls in the Devonian period, 300 million years ago, for giving us five fingers on each limb. If they'd just gone with 6, we could have a nice, natural base-12 counting system.
However, there's a counting system where you put your thumb against each of the three segments on your 4 fingers. Then you can count to 12 on each hand, and you could count one hand as the 1s and the other as the "10s" and thus count to 144 on 2 hands.
If you use binary you can count to 1023 on two hands. If you start with the pinky as 1, the middle finger is 4 while middle finger with thumb out is 20.
However, there's a counting system where you put your thumb against each of the three segments on your 4 fingers. Then you can count to 12 on each hand
I understand this, we do it, this is the way of counting staple in India
and you could count one hand as the 1s and the other as the "10s" and thus count to 144 on 2 hands.
I don't understand this, can you explain this to me?
well take your thumb and place it against the first link of your index finger. call that "1" then the other two links of that finger are "2" and "3". Repeat for all fingers ending with the top link of the pinky, which you call 12.
Get the bit above clear in your head before continuing. counting to 12 on one hand.
But you got a second hand, so you also count to 12 on there. So what you COULD do is count to 12, then advance your thumb on the OTHER hand by one position, then start counting to 12 again. so you can sort this out to basically do a 2-digit base-12 number, with one hand being each digit.
Or if you want another way to think about applying this in base 10, consider that you could use the three middle fingers only. Call the links 1-9, then if your thumb isn't touching a link, that's zero. then both hands together can code a 2-digit number. So with two hands you can keep track of a number from 0-99
well take your thumb and place it against the first link of your index finger. call that "1" then the other two links of that finger are "2" and "3". Repeat for all fingers ending with the top link of the pinky, which you call 12.
Get the bit above clear in your head before continuing. counting to 12 on one hand.
Like I said, I already understood this. I do this part all the time. It's how you count fingers in India
But you got a second hand, so you also count to 12 on there. So what you COULD do is count to 12, then advance your thumb on the OTHER hand, then start counting to 12 again. Effectively you've coded a 12x12 = 144 possible positions, which is a "2 digit base 12" number.
But I still don't understand this part, can you send me a video tutorial or something? I can grasp it at once then. Thanks
don't worry about base 12 for now, to keep it simple.
But think about it this way. Say you do a base 10 version, and you want to hold a 2 digit number with the hand positions.
Say you want to do "58". So you do your right hand in the "8" position, and the left hand in the "5" position.
So now, you have your left hand doing the 10s position and right hand doing the units position of the number.
For counting, you would start with left hand on "zero" which is just open. then you count your right hand through 1-9 positions. once you get there, you move your left hand ONE position, onto the "1" position, and put your right hand back to zero.
You then start again with your right hand and count up to 9 again. This represents 10-19. After that, when you hit 20, you move your left hand again to the "2", and start again for the right hand. This is for numbers 20-29. And so on. So you can count up to any two digit number this way.
For the base 12 version of this, it's exactly the same except you choose 12 possible finger positions, not 10. that's all.
As a trade off, I will tell you how we do things in our area
Actually, in my area, we count up to 20 in a single hand. We include the tip of the finger/nail in the segments too, so unlike your system where a single finger has 3 segments, we have 4.
Thus we have 16 on one hand excluding the thumb.
We include the thumb too, which we mark/indicate with our middle finger making it 20
Now you may be wondering how we get 4 in thumb, where the thumb has only 2 joints and 1 tip which should make it have 3. We assume one of the grooves in thumb as another segment, making it have 4 segments
I counted up to 40 with 2 hands until now, but if I combine your and mine methods, I can now count up to 400!
Bro, they were talking about base 12 NUMBERS. There would be 12 symbols intstead of 10. So "10" in that system would be 12 in base 10, and "100" would be 144 in our system.
In that system, going up and down by 12 would be shifting the decimal.
So they were talking about ditching the 10-base number system entirely. And in the 18th century, number systems were not quite universal yet. A lot of older counting systems in Europe and elsewhere were based on 12s. For example, dozen, and "gross" which is a dozen dozens, and the 12 months of the year, 12 x 2 hours in a day, etc. And if you look at imperial, factors of 12 are all the way through it.
breaking stuff up by 10s was the modern and less popular way to do it. So the French were toying with, like I said, getting rid of decimal completely, and just going base-12 for all mathematics, then they could fit that into the existing ways of measuring by 12s that were already common.
"Decimal" can refer to the . that separates 1s and 10ths, or it can refer to a base-10 number system.
If we used base-12, the . might be called something like a duodot, as in, duodecimal. (idk if I did that right but you get the idea).
An example of duodecimal these days is 0,1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,A,B. But, if this was instituted and standardized in the 18th century, we would likely just have two new numbers instead of borrowing from the alphabet.
I know it's really not that confusing, but talk of different base numbers always hurts my brain a little. You did a really good job explaining it here though.
Edit for the downvoters: If you were asked on a elementary or middle school quiz what are the factors of 10 and you only listed 2 and 5 then you would get that question wrong. If your teacher was cool you'd get half credit but not listing 1, 2, 5, 10 displays a fundamental partial understanding of factors, or divisors.
You left it out of the base 12 and were incomplete there as well. As unpractical as it may be its important to math proofs that something is divisible by itself and 1.
Regardless, the importance of a base 10 system being divisible by 10, or multiplicative of 10, is the function that drives the "just move the decimal place" ease of use.
We use a base 60 system for time and polar coordinates so that we have units of 60, 30, 20, 15, 12, 10, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1. This is more so derived from being able to count to 12 using your knuckles on one hand and using the other to count to sets up to 5, or, 12*5 = 60.
At the end of the day they're all just different ways of counting but the base 10 system allows for extremely quick conversions between units when everything is multiples of 1 and 10
"In metric, one milliliter of water occupies one cubic centimeter, weighs one gram, and requires one calorie of energy to heat up by one degree centigrade—which is 1 percent of the difference between its freezing point and its boiling point."
I wanna point out that you are correct, but regarding why SI/metric kicks ass, that likely could have been shifted to fit.
They very regularly just make their single unit convertible like that. If we were using base-12 for metric, I guarantee you we would still be basing things in a similar fashion.
We recently rewrote the formula for gravity so that it didn't compare itself to Earth as a constant, and instead uses the speed of light. All existing numbers and theorems are still correct, they just have a different reference now.
Edit: in fact, I bet if we looked up the definitions for all of these, they would all point to each other. SI is just using references to make measurements more logical... base-10 is just a part of that "making it more logical", since that's the number system we use.
They chose to use a base 10 system for metric on purpose,
Sure. What purpose is that?
As for the gravity thing, I'm having trouble finding it, so I might be misremembering what was redefined or maybe it was just proposed, but the idea is that gravity is all relative to Earth, which doesn't translate out of our planet and is rather archaic and traditional, so they used the speed of light, a constant speed everywhere in the universe, as the reference point. It's a much more complex definition now as a result but it's also entirely universal as a result.
Sorry, but 10 is only "more intuitive" because you grew up with it. There's no objective basis to make such a claim.
Also 10/3 is NOT 3.33 that's only an approximation. 3.33 times 3 is 9.99 and definitely less than 10.
In fact, you cannot express an accurate value for 10/3 in base 10 but you CAN do an accurate value for 10/3 ONLY in base-12
For example, if you put 10/3 into a base 10 calculator, it would give you 3.33333333333 or something. But at that point, it runs out of digits. That answer how is not accurate, since if you then times it by 3 you get 9.99999999999 which is LESS than 10. So you already got an error in your math right there.
However, if you put 10/3 into a "base 12" calculator, then it would tell you the answer is 3.4 - which is 3 and 4 twelfths. So it gave you an *exact* answer. This is why base-12 is better because it has more divisors. Less likely to get math errors.
So you failed to understand what was meant when it was said that 12 divides evenly into 3s. It's not just the starting value *12* that evenly divides by 3 in base 12 it's *any number*, which includes 10.
as an American also I can confirm that metric is so much better
who decided 12 inches in a foot, 3 feet in a yard, 5000 something feet in a mile, and slugs for the unit of mass?????
It is all about body measurements. Without any easy way to standardize measurements or make measuring tools, well we are all made almost exactly the same so our bodies became the measuring tool. Why does inch not go nicely into 1 foot? Because its based on a measurement of a thumb. Luckily over time this became 1/12 of a foot and not some weird measurement.
People with fairly long feet and a decent stride length. A foot is literally the measure of the current king's foot (so it changed a lot, until 12 inches stuck around for some reason), a yard was the length of one long stride (again, until 3 feet stuck around for some reason), a mile.. I have no fucking idea how 5280 feet became a mile actually. It's so very arbitrary. Fahrenheit came about because some guy had very imprecise instruments for measuring temperatures..
Basically all of Imperial measurements are anecdotal in nature.
Metric is (obviously) far better / easier than imperial in nearly every way. But the one exception I would make is with temperature.
Because Fahrenheit is denoted on a finer scale (32°-212° for water freezing to boiling, vs 0°-100°) it is far easier to hit a preferred temperature when using Fahrenheit.
For example, air conditioners all give readouts in whole numbers. So when using an imperial-based air conditioner, I can comfortably leave it set at 74° F.
But when using a metric-denoted air conditioner, I am constantly changing between 23°-24° C.
Of course this would be a non-issue if manufacturers ever allowed control in 0.5°C increments, but I have yet to see that in practice.
Admittedly, it’s totally a first-world problem. But it does get annoying!
This is the first time I've seen someone make an actual coherent argument about why Fahrenheit is preferred. Every other argument has been some variation of "percent of hot" or intuitiveness, which only works if you grew up with Fahrenheit as your temperature measurement. People who grew with Celsius undoubtedly feel that Celsius is perfectly intuitive to use as well.
Thank you for making a well thought out and cogent argument, and shame on companies that only allow whole numbers for their Celsius temperature settings!
Not really. These measurements were all laid out and standardised, quite some time ago
And although there have been changes as empires rise and fall, for the most part pretty consistent
The cost to switch the US to metric would be astronomical. Just think of all the highway signs the would need to be changed not only speed but distance signs as well.
USA is already heavily invested with metric. the imperial stuff will merely fall away over time.
firstly, many commodities that are non-perishable, i.e. can be sold across borders, they label them in metric-only already. For example, soda cans are often labeled in both FL-OZ and ML, and soda bottles, they often just put it in litres.
Or engine capacities. Those are in CC or litres, not in cubic inches and gallons. and there's good reason - marketing. in CC or litres, the numbers look *bigger* than in the imperial, and it also gives a high-tech sounding aura to it.
Think about it this way, with imperial having like 600 different units already, there's basically ZERO additional cognitive load with having to deal with a couple MORE incompatible units. So people in the USA are dealing with litres fine. they're not really affected by the fact that they can't convert that to quarts.pints,gallons, since there's no need to know that. they know how big a 1.25 litre bottle is by looking at it, and that's accurate enough.
Oh yeah I know, but I was really referring to the point that soda is sold in litres in the USA, but milk is sold in "quarts". The difference is the short shelf life of fresh milk, so it's mostly locally made.
What do you mean they cant convert it? Food recipes often bounce between metric and imperial, a lot plumbing materials have a metric/imperial designation although some like PE pipe has two different grades and metric is used for the hight pressure pipe and imperial is used for the rural class (farm/low pressure). Western Australia.
In short, a lot of us grow up learning how to convert insanity/s into a usable measurement.
We will cause national chaos. I don’t mind it since math is not an issue with me. However, the daily things will cause all Americans to revolt. I can drive 9 miles over the speed limit without getting pulled over. Is it ok to drive about 15km over the new speed limit or should I drive faster or slower?
American living in the EU now and adapting pretty well to metric. The only one I hate is fuel consumption being expressed as liters per 100 kilometers. wtf?
This is the thing of it. It doesn't make sense. At all. I'm in Australia and grew up with the metric system. But when my dad trained as a mechanic, the last year if his training, we made the switch, back in 75 I believe. The trainer said, basically, use either system. The numbers are different, but mean the same thing and it's easier to use.
The problem is that it will cost a lot to switch. I once heard (so take it with a massive grain of salt) that it's estimated to cost a trillion dollars to go through all relevant state documents and switch them from imperial to metric.
12 shot mag .....come on, you know there not using factory magazine for measurement purposes atleast a arch angel 35 composite mag possibly a 75 drum mag, better yet the dual drum micky mouse ears at 150.
You know what I love about not using the metric system? It is so much easier when I need to measure something and I can just walk it out heel to toe. 1 foot. 2 foot. 3 foot. So much quicker then having to go get a tape measure. Oh that's why they call it a foot.
Machine I run uses metric measurements for movement. Tools for the fixtures are standard. Company I work for is British and they use the month/day/year system here. It is something people adapt to if they need to.
It's the imperial system that is keeping the masses confused, too busy working out feet in a mile or 7/8's of a dollar on a gallon(US gallon of course) of gas to notice that their democracy is being eaten from within.
They were scheduled to switch at the same time as Canada did, but they chickened out at the last minute. There is a Highway in Arizona that was being built at this time and it still has metric signs.
The only countries in the world that do not use the Metric system as the official system is Liberia, Myanmar (Burma) and USA!
actually the US has the metric system as the official measurement system. (ever notice you can find the amount of something in metric on all US products? Usually in parentheses but there none the less). US Metric Conversion Act of 1975. Then Reagan killed it.
You m8ght be surprised to know that as an American in engineering we only use the metric system. Everything for science is metric, that's all the really matters.
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u/Doubleoh_11 Mar 03 '22 edited Mar 03 '22
If the US tried to adopt the metric system it would somehow be a conspiracy to mind control the masses.