> 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... ;)