Another reason to keep fighting

  • Healthcare_pls [he/him]
    hexagon
    ·
    4 years ago

    How so? I’ve never done carpentry but I want to learn how a measuring system affects different jobs

    • alcoholicorn [comrade/them, doe/deer]
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      edit-2
      4 years ago

      Imperial tends towards the use of fractions and a unit of 12 is more composite than anything divisible by 10, which makes the math easier. Metric gets you weird decimals and division/multiplication by less friendly numbers that takes a second, is more error prone, and needs to be double checked.

      It's more the fault of using a base 10 number system than anything else.

      • Healthcare_pls [he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        4 years ago

        So like if you need 3/4 of a foot for something, then it’s easier in imperial than metric

        • alcoholicorn [comrade/them, doe/deer]
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          edit-2
          4 years ago

          Yes, but suppose you cut that in half. 9 inches minus a blade is 8 7/8, divided by 2 gives you 4 and 7/16.

          That is quick to do in your head and there was very little room for error. If you had to do that in metric, you're having to do division with 6 significant figures.

          Lets say 100 mm, minus a 3.175 mm blade gives you uhhh 96.825, divided by 2 and that's wait, let me get my phone to make sure one minute OK that's 48.4125.

          If you add arbitrary measurements back together, it just gets you even worse numbers, whereas imperial stays with fractions of powers of 2 and tends to stay at the same denominator or even simpler ones more frequently than metric will let you work with fewer significant figures.

      • Healthcare_pls [he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        4 years ago

        “Actually, trying to learn about other workers’ experiences and form new opinions based on those experiences is not dialectical and totally liberal”