Canadian engineer here. Although we use the metric system in principle, in reality we use feet and inches for everything. There are lots of benefits to using base 12 for measurements.
The number 12 has six factors, which are 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12. It is the smallest number to have six factors, the largest number to have at least half of the numbers below it as divisors, and is only slightly larger than 10. (The numbers 18 and 20 also have six factors but are much larger.) Ten, in contrast, only has four factors, which are 1, 2, 5, and 10.
I get the Europeans hate it though because only the people who live near Chernobyl can count to 12 on their fingers.
The thing is that outside of North America people aren’t terrified to death of decimals. We actually use them and find the process simple. So those factors of yours are completely irrelevant to us.
Sounds like your terrified of duodecimals. Base 12 number systems are better at somethings than base 10 and a number of mathematicians believe it’s a superior number system all round and easier to teach to young people. And metric would work equally well in theory with either base 10 or base 12.
Canadian engineer here. Although we use the metric system in principle, in reality we use feet and inches for everything. There are lots of benefits to using base 12 for measurements.
The number 12 has six factors, which are 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12. It is the smallest number to have six factors, the largest number to have at least half of the numbers below it as divisors, and is only slightly larger than 10. (The numbers 18 and 20 also have six factors but are much larger.) Ten, in contrast, only has four factors, which are 1, 2, 5, and 10.
I get the Europeans hate it though because only the people who live near Chernobyl can count to 12 on their fingers.
I know it’ll never happen but I’m still camp duodecimal, all the way.
The thing is that outside of North America people aren’t terrified to death of decimals. We actually use them and find the process simple. So those factors of yours are completely irrelevant to us.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal
Sounds like your terrified of duodecimals. Base 12 number systems are better at somethings than base 10 and a number of mathematicians believe it’s a superior number system all round and easier to teach to young people. And metric would work equally well in theory with either base 10 or base 12.
12 is better than 10, I’ll give you that. But 100 is better than 144, and 1000 is way better than 1728.
And that doesn’t even get to 0.1 versus 1/12, or 0.01 versus 1/144.
So 12 might be a better standalone number, but it’s a terrible base to work in.
But 144 is better than 100, for the exact same reason that 12 is better than 10?
There’s a reason measured angles go to 360ths, then subdivided by 60 or even by 60 again.
100 is as terrible a base as 10, and you run into it all the time if you’re designing something in metric; you can’t divide by 3 evenly.