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Comment by eps | Hacker News Reader

Come to think of it, being able to cleanly divide a minute or an hour into 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 equal parts is pretty damn handy.

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This is the same reason a point is 1/72 on an inch - many factors make convenient typesetting.

Now apply the same logic to measurement, and you'll see why it's so handy to use a dozenal foot for fabricating things.

Is 1/3 (1/6) such an important concept? 1/2 (1/4) is natural in metric.

I would think a bigger benefit is that you can drop up and down without any math depending on the precision you need. Or use decimals, no math involved either, since it's the same thing.

Yes, 1/3 and 1/6 are quite important. Do enough making and you will run into those fractions plenty. It just turns out that in practice, as you say, easy unit conversions outweigh the benefit of clean division. Metric's important benefit is that it's a consistent base, not that it's specifically base-10.

And now that we use computers for a lot of measurement, those infinite decimals aren't as big of a deal. (Well, most of the time, anyway. Representation of infinite fractions famously creates some programming problems. But I mean for the user making the measurement.)

Base-10 is easy to learn since it's the same we use for counting, but I think there's an interesting argument to be made that purely from a science/engineering/making perspective it would be better to use a consistent base-12 measurement system.

Best of all worlds would have been if we used base 60 numbers like the Sumerians/Babylonians did. Very smart way to do things for 3000 BC.

Now apply the same logic to currency. What is the combined value of thirteen shillings and ten farthings? Simple, it's 317 halfpennies, or £317/480. It's much easier to deal with than a more difficult calculation like $0.25 + $0.37 = $0.62.

Now apply that same logic to how we write our numbers. Duodecimal notation makes very clean multiplication tables and makes arithmetic easier to learn.

I'm a twelve maximalist. Let's convert SI to duodecimal prefixes. One kilometer should be 1728 meters (of course that's 1000 in duodecimal). One centimeter should be 1/144 of a meter.

I keep hoping for a chance to welcome some highly composite overlords.

Yes. That's why I love metric clock, the number '5' screams 1/2 to me, and '3.33' screams 1/3 much more than 6 and 4 do.

Don't forget 10, 12, 15, 20, 30

It's almost like circles are the perfect shape for sliced pies afterall.

> cleanly divide a minute or an hour into 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 equal parts

Lawyers bill their time in tenths of an hour - exactly 6 minute increments.

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