Ingenious ruler design unites metric and imperial measurements

right!? i mean you can divide ten in half only once before you have to start introducing fractions. maybe base 16 is ideal? 32? 64? some sort of system where you can easily subdivide.

but it’s not really cold until -40 in either system, so your premise is flawed.

0 is damn cold. what are you talking about. I just lived through a bunch of zero. and a few days nearing -20 and that was insane cold. I stand by my statement. in human terms, 0 and 100 are both “fuck this, i can’t” temperatures and everything in between is like “alright, i can deal with this”

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I don’t think you understand me. No numbering system with a fixed radix will do!

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Reminds me of an episode of Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei where two girls get ready to share a cake by slicing it in half, just in time for a third girl to show up. So each half is sliced in thirds, and a fourth girl shows up. Each girl gets three twelfths, and just then a fifth girl shows up and they run the whole cake through the Cuisinart.

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oh man. I’ll take your word for it. That’s too much math for me. I just realized i was actually trying to reply to the first person you quoted.

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base 72 would work pretty well for Imperial. Other than the Nail (162/72") and the Twip (1/1440") you can set the base to an inch and the rest divide nicely.

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To be fair, i’m not being in the least bit serious. In reality i prefer the phinary (or phi-nary) number system:

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0 F is only -17 C. That’s shorts weather up here.

alright, but when it get’s to be 100C outside let me know how that feels. lol

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You got me there, I’m good up to about 75F

That’s really great and all, but if you’re going to go there, you may as well go full on crazy using an imaginary base. I mean this radix includes all real, imaginary, and complex numbers in a single simple number.

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This is a fixed radix that i could accept.

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Base 20 is the way to go.

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This!!!

This was the vid I wanted to link for this thread but couldn’t remember the right search terms.

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So…you can’t base your cabinetry on multiples of 3, like, say, 99 or 102 cm? I’m genuinely curious here.

Are standardized pieces going to come in 99 centimeter or 1 meter sizes?

Next, I’ve divided my 99cm cabinet into three 33cm bays. Now, where’s the midpoint of each bay?

You can do all these things, of course, the question is how much time you spend with a paper and pencil and how much time you spend squinting at the space between millimeter marks.

It’s not accidental that the number of inches in a foot and a yard are both “anti-primes”.

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Yeah, basing your number system on rational numbers is for wimps :wink:

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image
Every morning.

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“greatest division in human society”? The US vs. everywhere else - and someone please explain, why does the US use an “imperial” measuring system? they’ve always claimed they have no empire

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