Because adding 7/16ths of an inch to 7/8ths of a mile and getting an answer in inches isn't easy for a human. Adding 1cm to 982m and getting an answer in centimeters is dead easy for a human.

THAT'S why human intuition about measurement doesn't mean a damn thing.

Using metric means using the system optimized for humans. Period.

Your absolutism is a bit silly. I don't think the Imperial system is good for anything beyond construction or cooking, but there's a reason it excels those areas. And it's exactly because it's more usable by humans in certain contexts (like construction or cooking). 1/3 of a meter should not be an irrational number - how is that "optimized for humans"?

A scalable system that shares the divisibility of the foot would certainly trump both systems.

It is appalling for cooking. Don't get me started on the shitshow of using "cups" to measure weight.

If you want to measure ⅓ metre, go ahead. Nothing stops you from doing that.

The usual convention in construction in Europe is multiples of 150mm, for example a typical large appliance is 595mm wide to fit a 600mm wide space.

Nit: 1/3 of a meter is rational. You're looking for "whole number."

Correct - I've admittedly had a few beers.

Which might be obvious due to me debating the merits of the number 12 on the internet.

Well 12 is amazing, but arguably there are too many other negative aspects in the imperial system as a whole.

But 1/2 isn't a whole number either.

Base-10 absolutism rears its head again. The objection to 1/3 is that it has a non-terminating decimal expansion. This is not a problem if you're using base-anything-with-3-as-a-factor.

What about 1/5 instead? There's always going to be problems with some base, the point is that unit conversions are super easy with metric, and it's easier to teach to children.

As for temperature, 0 is really gold and 100 is really hot in pretty much every scale, that's just a very subjective way of describing things.

The imperial system is not good for construction. Try measuring a 2x4 sometime.

It's just an established convention. And it sucks.

A 2x4 is cut to 2" by 4" wet and shrinks when it is dried. I'm no huge fan, but this is not an issue with the imperial system.

Uh, no. The final 2x4 product is milled mostly dry. Mills allow the timber to air dry, then mill, then post-kiln, and may mill the final product after that e.g. by cutting 2x4s out of a 12x4. The reduction of a 2x4 from 2x4" to 1.75x3.5" is done on purpose, because modern mills can put guarantees on the density of knots in the wood, thus requiring less wood for the same engineered strength guarantee. So the 2x4" product is not actually 2x4 because the mill is asserting that while there is less wood than just cutting a 2x4, the board they're selling is as strong as a 2x4 would have been at the turn of the 20th century, when they didn't have a way to guarantee the density of knots.

The imperial system is terrible for cooking, in my experience as a home cook and baker.

Measuring dry goods by volume instead of by weight? Good luck ever getting consistent results.

Base 10 math is the most intuitive for humans. Fractions are an abomination.

Math isn't intuitive for humans. It takes a lot of work to learn it and most people don't remember any of it past school age. If we taught base 12 instead of 10 it would be just as intuitive.

But we don't. The number system used in the western world is base 10. So why add base 12 on top of that?

1/3 of a metre is 333mm, which is generally precise enough for construction.

How is the system good for cooking? Literally the first thing amazon echo was showcasing was unit conversions while cooking.

In what situation would you be adding 7/16ths of an inch to 7/8 of a mile? If you have such crazy tolerances you shouldn't be using fractions from the start. And even if you did, with imperial system you could just write '7/8 mile and 7/16th of an inch' or '7/8 mi. 7/16 " ' and when they measure it out they will measure 7/8 of a mile, then add on that 7/16 inch.

And whatever you are measuring that length with, fucking awesome job getting 1/16 or better tolerances over that amount of distance with .

Do people in metric-using countries commonly need to know what 982m + 1cm is? It never seems to come up here in the US...

Perhaps not, but nonetheless I instantly worked it out in my head without even trying.

These units are terrible for humans too.

Humans are good at base 10.

For this human, the relationships when (for instance) talking about water are great -

1g = 1ml = 1cm^3

Humans are naturally bad at base 10. This is noticeable when learning counting and arithmetic - children often skip 7 and jumble 6, 7, 8. Base-10 is not so bad once one has learned it, though.

Humans are really good at doubling and halving, which the Imperial system excels at.

That's false, the Imperial system is pretty bad at doubling or halving.

What's double of 3.7 feet? Or half of 1.5? What is 3.7 feet even? Is it 3 feet 7 inches or 3 feet plus 7th of a feet (This last question is a nitpick)

Any of these in metric are super simple, but just harder to do in base-12.

And I would add, it is not immediate to go from 200 inch to 18 feet 2 inches

In practice, as the previous poster pointed out, Imperial numbers are rational, not real. You wouldn’t normally experience ‘3.7’ feet.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m certainly not a proponent of the Imperial system (for instance, calculating prices for groceries is painful). I am just pointing out that the metric system doesn’t take into account many Human use cases (Base-10 isn’t great for Humans). It was a system forced upon people by an ‘ivory tower’, and consistent with US philosophy, it makes sense that they rejected it.

Americans are pretty awesome.

The imperial system is not even in a consistent base!

I should add to the discussion somewhere that when I write code (or even do calculations) that deals with Imperial units, I just use the SI prefixes and end up with things like centifeet and kiloinches (miles are banished forever). It makes the code a lot easier and the people who are used to Imperial can tell what you're going on about.

Also, the statement that metric is more useful for measurement largely ignores the fact that Imperial has stuck around so long because of its usefulness in trade work.

It's definitely ONLY because of base12, but being base12 - imo - positions it far beyond metric for daily use. There's a reason why food items so commonly come by the dozen. Why would anyone prefer to build a house using a system that can't even accurately measure 1/3?

1/3 can easily be measured in metric... it's just not a whole number.

Far out I can invent a system that is unique to everything, and I can create my own abominable conversion ratios all I like. It doesn't make the system superior, it makes my system necessarily inferior.

My TV is now 12 Settos in size. My surround system consumes 12 audots of power. My fridge holds 12 cubic fudo of room.

There. Now everything is easily divisible by 12ths.

I won't even go into conversion factors on this insanity.

Metric is objectively the better system to anyone that doesn't have a decades-long familiarity with the stupidity that is the imperial system. That's coming from an american without a college education, by the way. I am the target demographic for the pro-imperial people. I wasn't abducted into any metric-only education system and forced to convert or fail and disappoint my family. I was a disappointment by my own hand, thank you very much.

I challenge you to make a 1/3 cut in meter length wood using a metric ruler. Must be accurate to 1/128 inch (0.2mm), the tolerance used in fine woodworking.

Not only is it trivial to just cut at 33.33 or what have you, your argument breaks down at cut it into 1/5s.

Good luck with imperial. And has to be accurate to .02mm. In metric? This is a no brainer

That doesn't really hurt the argument at all - you're just arguing about factors now, and if you're really going to go there, 12 wins due to having more factors. The mathematical correction you'll have to do to measure 1/5th will be displaced by all the correction you don't have to do for other cases.

You're bent on the whole number thing. Why?

Whole numbers don't make things easier to measure or cut or reason about. I can measure in thirds or fifths of a meter or a foot or an inch or any unit you want with a compass and a straight edge.

You're arguing that the mark on the tape measure is possible for imperial and impossible for metric, when thirds are involved. Not true.

Because infinite numbers are not a natural expression of discrete measurements, and when it comes to being price 1/3 = 4 is always going to be easier to put your finger on than 1/3 = 3.333.

I work in software and data analysis in the construction industry. A continuous measurement is good for some things, but it's definitely not good for discrete measurements. Furthermore, a lot of the people who work in the field for construction greatly prefer Imperial for a reason. They have no bias towards systems beyond what works fast and easy.

I work a lot with wood in the metric system and the third thing is bot a problem at all. I never had even remotly any trouble finding 333.33 mm or a 666.66 on a tape measure. For anything that needs extreme accurcay I’d go with my iron ruler with 0.1 mm ruling and beyond that I would go for a caliper.

If you consistently have to use a weird measurement over and over again, you usually end up making a temporary ruler (paper, wood, metal) anyways

What is stopping people from making meter sticks with 3000 lines, i.e. every third of a millimeter is marked?

(The point is, there is nothing any more "infinite" about the rational number 1/3 than 1/4, 1/5, 1/2 or what have you. It just can't be written in the arbitrary base 10 system, just like 1/5 can't be written in base 12)

There is nothing stopping you from writing 1/3 meter.

> and when it comes to being price 1/3 = 4 is always going to be easier to put your finger on than 1/3 = 3.333.

Am I missing something? Wouldn’t it just be putting your finger on the 10 cm mark? This is approx 4”.

I realize this is not exact conversion, but it’s trivial to come up with examples where metric is easier: say you have a piece of wood 7 7/8” long that you want to cut in half. Is it easier to put your finger on 3 15/16” or 10 cm?

"price" is an autocorrection of "precise"

The factor argument is not really something that stands up, because you need to consider factors for an arbitrary length of something in the world, not a well defined unit of your own making.

How about 1/3rd of a tree? It's likely to be in some ungodly fractional amount of an inch, that's extremely hard to convert into feet, but in metric the decimal system just makes it super easy.

Can I pick the blade thickness?

Sure, kerf is less important than the thickness of your pencil line in terms of accuracy

Place the center of your line at the correct location.

wasn't going to use a pencil

You're missing the point if you don't see the problem of an infinitely repeating measurement. That doesn't translate to a tangible action. You can't cut 1/3 of a meter, and there's no subunit to roll down to that can express the right number. It's not like Imperial system exists for uneducated people - it exists for trades people. Metric is the "simple" system, because it ties back to 10, a number we're all used to. I like the metric system for its scalability, but as somebody who works in a math-y area of computing, I have nothing but distaste for base10.

I can cut 1/3 of a meter just as accurately as you can cut 1/3 of a yard.

Not being a whole number does not make it harder to find where it is.

Ha! I'm happy for your apparent virtuosity, but the whole of America's construction industry is quite a few years into disagreeing with you.

So THAT'S why U.S., Liberian and Myanmar architecture is centuries ahead of the rest of the world.

By the way, why isn't your currency base 12? All the purported benefits that apply to length would certainly apply to money as well.

This is just silly. People in most of the world are able to build things just fine without using the American system of units.

Yeah just line it up with that non-existant mark on your measuring stick. Is it enough of a tolerance problem to really worry about? Likely not. But you still can't point to a specific line to measure too unless they have specially added 1/3 marks.

> you still can't point to a specific line to measure too unless they have specially added 1/3 marks.

You also can't point to a line to measure a quarter of an inch, unless they have specifically added 1/4 marks. What's your point?

I have a project where I need 3 wooden blocks, each perfect squares, to fit width wise in a 10” wide gap. I don’t want any space between these blocks sides of the gap they fit in. It’s an important project to me and I’m willing to pay a substantial sum of money.

But from what I am reading it sounds like you’re not able to do the job, the blocks need to be 3 1/3” wide each. It’s a no-go if I see someone try to cut them to 3 5/16”

What kind of system doesn’t let you cut such a fundamental length into thirds. Crazy.

I bet you that if I cut the blocks to 84.7 mm they would do just fine. If they don't, you take a file to one of them. And you have to do it like this with wood, anyway - because of imprecise saws, and moisture changes.

Yeah my point was every measurement system has some value you can’t easily divide into thirds. How you measure depends on your tolerances. I have no qualms using either system, but metric is a much better system in my opinion.

Counterpoint, the us already had undergone industrial revolution and had standardized size on inches. It would have been expensive to restandardize everything