Comment on inches plus coins equals metric system

norgur@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

• RGB3x3@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Maths may be important, but figuring out what’s bigger, 7/16 vs 3/8, is a stupid fucking system when metric exists.

  Centimeters/millimeters: “6 is bigger than 5 is bigger than 4”

  Inches: “I don’t fuckin know what’s bigger, 5/16 or 3/8? How about 7/32? Fuck you, I’m just making it all up.”

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  • creditCrazy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Even more ridiculous is that they could have just made everything one fraction. Like 1/10 then 2/10 then 3/10. This crap is over complicated by it’s own rules.

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    • chiliedogg@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      What if you need to represent something between 1/10th and 2/10ths without misrepresenting your precision?

      Fractional measurements are way better for indicating precision than decimal. With decimal precision can only be increased or decreased by a power of 10, whereas fractional can be any level of precision - just represent the precision in the denominator.

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      • creditCrazy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        Congrats were still useing fractions for a wrench. That still goes 10x.

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      • joel_feila@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

        I give your comment 13/4 up votes

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    • Sagifurius@lemm.ee ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

      It’s more it didn’t have rules. Decimal standard was used by surveyors and engineers, mechanical types. Fractional was more useful for carpenters and tradesmen, descending halves is more intuitive than descending tens, it just became custom. You can order a “big inch” ruler, ten inches in a foot, inches in tenths down too, or a caliper that displays in thousandths

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  • thecrotch@sh.itjust.works ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    3/8 is 6/16. 7/16 is bigger. That’s like 3rd grade math.

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  • norgur@discuss.tchncs.de ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    What’s that in hogs hair lengths?

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  • joel_feila@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    how would not know what bigger

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• creditCrazy@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Theres 2 pretty good reasons why I only ever have 1 fractional wrench at a time. One so I can just move up the line until one fits and the other reason is that fractional is not used in modern cars. I only ever need to break my imperial set out when I’m working on a antique car.

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