I understand and acknowledge that Metric is the system of the future, but it really annoys me when people pretend that the Standard system mysteriously has centuries of staying power yet no underlying logic.
Also, base12 is the best base because it has so many divisors. Imagine how glorious the world would look if we’d evolved 6 digits on each counting hand…
A Pun Involving Travel 
I think the main point of using a decimal based system has the distinct advantage to be compatible with moving a simple period in calculations in order to scale to the next measuring unit. Also a milliliter of water weighs 1 gram.
LikeLike
A pint is a pound the world around.
LikeLike
The units of volume do make the most sense of the English system (aside from having “ounce” be a unit of weight and volume, sigh). It’s a litte tougher with the weights and distances. 12 inches = 1 foot, 3 feet = 1 yard, 1760 yards = 1 mile? And yes, I had to ask Google for the last one because I can never remember it.
LikeLike
Mike Conley That is because a mile consists of feet, not yards.
LikeLike
I can’t remember how many feet it contains either. I usually just remember it’s about 1.6km so it’s a little more than 1600 x 3 feet.
LikeLike
Except when it’s not. UK pint = 568ml. UK pound = 454g.
Go home, American units. You are drunk. Seriously, please stop calling these “English” measurements. We were sensible enough to stop using virtually all of them decades ago, except for a few wacky holdouts who get themselves on the news.
LikeLike
Metric is just simpler, if not the best.
LikeLike
JP Lizotte that’s the point I was trying to make. Imagine if we’d evolved 12 counting digits – “Metric” would have an awesome base divisible by 2, 3, 4, and 6 instead of our lame base, divisible by only 2 and 5.
For my money, this is the strongest evidence we have against the idea of “Intelligent Design.”
LikeLike
If only we had 2 extra fingers!
LikeLike
I get your point Mike Jurney . Just because a factor has more denominators does not make it simpler. In fact it complexifies the math. In the end, even the fractions are expressed in floating point units, so it’s simply a continuation in that sense.
LikeLike
For an arithmetic base, more divisors is incredibly useful. All of 1/3, 1/4, 1/6, and 1/2 of 12 are whole values. How nice would it be if 1/3rd of our counting base wasn’t a repeating decimal?
LikeLike
Well if I need to measure something, I would tend to want to avoid periodical decimal numbers. A third is very awkward to measure precisely.
LikeLike
Not if it’s 1/3rd of 12, it’s not. That’s just 4 🙂
LikeLike
Related: OSCON 2012: Dan Bentley, “Metric Doesn’t Work”
LikeLike
If you count the bones in your fingers, you have 12, so you can keep count with your thumb to 12, and use the other hand to keep track of 12s up to the magic number 60 (5 dozen). This has seen some use throughout history as a counting system. I suppose you cold actually count to 144, whereas in base 10 it’s hard to get past 30. Of course, if there were ID, that would mean we were given two natural counting systems and chose the worse one. But ID would have to know this, so it would have only given us the superior system!
Of course, this could lead to problems when ordering ‘two fingers’ of whiskey and getting 6 oz.
LikeLike
My mom posed the six digit question to me when I was like 8. Trippy shit there.
LikeLike