I've tried in the past to explain how awesome the sqrt(2) ratio used as the basis of DIN/ISO page sizes is, but there are some very dumb people on HN: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=7821947
Clarification: the guy was being dumb, but I was dumb for engaging with him in the first place. I'm in no way 'blaming' somebody for being dumb.
Blaming others is a poor lifestyle adaptation. Whether or not the other guy was actually dumb or not isn't relevant.
"I have tried in the past to explain how awesome the ratio is, but it didn't go well because of dumb people."
You are correct that you're not blaming anyone for being dumb, but you are blaming others for the explanation not going well.
This:
> I have tried in the past to explain how awesome the ratio is, but it didn't go well because of dumb people.
Does not mean the same thing as this:
> I've tried in the past to explain how awesome the sqrt(2) ratio used as the basis of DIN/ISO page sizes is, but there are some very dumb people on HN.
The word 'tried' implies an attempt that failed. And in the phrase "I've tried... but...", the part after the but almost always implies causality.
Yup, he was being dumb.
(I agree that they miss the point that you aren't promoting metric)
talideon, you do not come across well from that exchange. You may or may not have been talking to a brick wall, but you weren't listening to one. I more-or-less agree with raldi: instead of fixating loudly on what Turing_Machine did wrong in that thread, think about how you could do better next time.
> _The units are irrelevant._ That's what you're not getting. What is relevant is that the same page width/height ratio is maintained between the different page sizes.
When I was younger, I would've had more patience with this kind of thing; but as I get older, it becomes less and less worth my time and energy.
> The 1:sqrt(2) ratio used is extremely convenient as it scales up and down nicely
Then he wrote this:
> How are factors of 2 and sqrt(2) "based on metric"? At some level you could say that the U.S. measurements are "based on metric" since almost all of them are defined in terms of metric units. You just have to apply the proper factor (which is a decimal, but a terminating one --- unlike the sqrt(2) business).
(Emphasis mine.)
That is where the "You appear not to understand the actual utility behind the page width/height ratio used in ISO/DIN page sizes." comment came from. I wasn't calling him dumb. I hadn't flipped the bozo bit on him at that point, though I had by the time I wrote "Ok. I'll be super explicit about this." later on.
> They're not part of the metric system, simply based on it. The 1:sqrt(2) ratio used is extremely convenient as it scales up and down nicely
TM thought those two sentences were related. Ve thought you were saying that the factor of sqrt(2) was what made it metric. Ve was correcting something that you hadn't actually said, but which would have been wrong if you had said it.
And then your reply to ver made the same mistake, and you do not get to feel superior about this.
("You appear to not understand" isn't literally calling someone dumb, but that's pretty much what it boils down to.)
I'm not going to make another of the same mistakes you did: I'm tapping out here.
My emphasis didn't appear to get through. This is what I'd meant to emphasise.
> You just have to apply the proper factor (which is a decimal, but a terminating one --- unlike the sqrt(2) business).
That's where the "You appear to not understand" comment came from, because they didn't understand it.
I literally have no idea how I could've phrased that better.
I'm also tapping out: I'm in work, and didn't expect to spend so much time at this.
If you aren't worried about maintaining the aspect ratio for 1/2 pages, you can maintain any arbitrary aspect ratio as you scale up and down (but you don't get the 'easy' scaling to half or double areas).
That's where the imperial fluid analogy comes in, there is convenience derived from having it be base 2.
Thus when calculating postage weight by counting the number of sheets you can calculate that, for example, the weight of one A4 sheet is 1/16 the gsm of the paper - 1/(2^4).
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paper_density#Basis_weight
In order to figure out the actual mass of a sheet of U.S. paper from the reported basis weight, you must know how many sheets of paper were in the "basis ream" and what dimensions they were. The basis ream sheet dimensions may have nothing to do with your final sheet of paper, and the number of sheets varies too.
I know those types of conversations. They stay with you for months and sometimes years, never ceasing to irritate.
When it's the other way round, you can find peace at some point (even if it takes months or years). But if you were the brick wall, it first takes months or years and THEN, when you finally do realize the reality of the situation, it takes even longer to settle. shudders
If you read the parent (by somebody else, not Turing_Machine), it said that the ISO/DIN page sizes are part of the metric system. I corrected him saying that they were only based on it (in that the sizes were defined in terms of metric units) and not part of it, but that what really mattered was the ratio between the long and short edges of the sheets being √2.
Then Turing_Machine came in with this total non sequitur:
> How are factors of 2 and sqrt(2) "based on metric"?
And then things went completely off the rails.
Edit: s/same/came/