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0 pointsjeroenhd4y ago0 comments

The use of the decimal system is kind of funny because for the longest time large parts of Europe used a 20 based system for a lot of common math. You can still see this in French, where 99 is spelled out as "four times twenty and nineteen". Even in English you can find the remains of the 20-based system, because of the way numbers are expressed: twenty-one, but not tenny-one or even one-teen; twenty-five but not onety-five but fifteen.

The foot is directly based on a person's body part (which caused major issues when bordering jurisdictions used different sizes for a "foot"). The denomination used for meters is a lot more disconnected, its basis focused on the planet instead of on a body part. The choice for the decimal system is much more akin to the choice of 3/12/8/10 in the imperial system.

You can also quickly run into issues if you assume a meter is almost exactly a meter, there's a 9% difference there. The difference can quickly add up, and plenty of international orders have been messed up that way. The distances are similar enough that they serve the same use in day to day expressions, but they're certainly not "almost exactly" the same.

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perl4ever4y ago

>its basis focused on the planet instead of on a body part

It was based on both, and both measurements are completely determined by the happenstance of life on earth rather than the laws of nature.

>which caused major issues when bordering jurisdictions used different sizes for a "foot"

The meter has also had varying definitions leading to slightly different values. Obviously if you are going to base it on the size of the earth there is going to be some uncertainty and of course that's not the current definition.

I'm not really trying to convince you or anybody that meters are not superior to yards, just that it's hard to explain why without appealing to prejudice and/or making categorical statements that are false.

>The choice for the decimal system is much more akin to the choice of 3/12/8/10 in the imperial system.

Is it correct to call SI the decimal system? Powers of ten time units never caught on above seconds.

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