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I have often wondered if there are any subtle emergent properties that tend to occur due to humans tendency to round interacting with a given system of measurement.

For example, perhaps cars designed in America tend to be more|less aesthetically pleasing because American designers will round up to an inch whereas European designers are (hypothetically) unlikely to feel the need to round up to 2.54 cm instead of say 2.5 cm.

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One thing (which is mentioned in the wikipedia page) is that in the metric system where e.g. meters and kilometers are related by a power of 10, a length which is a preferred number in one unit will also be a preferred number in the other unit. This does not work out for e.g. feet and miles.

So imagine you have a landscape architect designing the interior of a park and a civil engineer designing the city around it. In the metric system, their preferred placements automatically agree. In imperial units they have to coordinate that.

What a wonderful example of two opposing hypotheses from same premises, both providing value. I choose both.

I don't really buy that any particular ratios are more or less aesthetically pleasing. Seems like designer received wisdom.

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