The eye of hurricane Matthew passes directly over a weather buoy

Re:The eye of hurricane Matthew passes directly over a weath... by raattgift on Wednesday October 05, 2016 @12:48PM (#12645524)

Why 12 and not 2, 1 or 1890? The choice of the number of values per position is entirely arbitrary, and almost the entire reason why you prefer twelve over ten is that twelve has more prime factors AND is close to ten. Six has the same number of prime factors as twelve; so does twenty-four.

"Nobody ever need to divide anything by 5"

So, what is left after you remove your "2 3 4 6 as factors" from your example up there of 60? If you work 35 or 40 hours in a week, how many hours should you expect to work on a work day?

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Re:The eye of hurricane Matthew passes directly over a weath... by dredmorbius on Thursday October 06, 2016 @12:29PM (#12653781)

Multiples of primes can be handy. 12 = 2 * 2 * 3, which gives subdivisions of 1/2, 1/3, 1/4, and 1/6.

Other possibly useful values might be 30 (235) or 210 (2357), which has factors of all the primes lower than 10.

The Babylonian system, based on 12, 30, 60, 120, 180, and 360 (223, 235, 2235, 2^3 * 3 * 5, and 2^3 * 3^2 * 5 respectively) have multiple useful subdivisions.

Base-ten decimal is fun, but produces non-finite values when fractional values are considered: 1/3 = 0.333..., 2/3 = 0.666..., etc. Systems in which those fractions are inherently supported, and for which by Benford's law you're likely to see the divisors 2 - 9 fairly frequently (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benford%27s_law), this can be convenient.

Particularly in an age of rulers, protractors, compases, and no digital electronic computors.

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