this post was submitted on 31 Mar 2024
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Why still using the imperial system? (abananaforscale.com)
submitted 5 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]
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[–] [email protected] -2 points 5 months ago* (last edited 5 months ago) (1 children)

“wait, what is 5/8 + 3/16 + 1 7/64?”

In binary it's 0.101 + 0.0011 + 1.000111, or laid out vertically:

0.101
0.0011
1.000111
=
1.111011

Halving numbers is no harder than decimating them, probably easier for most of us. Even computer scientists don't think of base-10 as The Way The Truth and The Light; they use base-2 or base-16 for various things.

Decimal/base-ten is fine as a convention, but insisting that One Convention is perfect and others are heretical is stupid.

[–] [email protected] 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

You do you, but if you're reverting to binary to explain how simple it is to add values together, I think you've made a wrong turn somewhere.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago

halving is a really easy mental operation; we do it all the time mentally and with physical things like bits of food or drink or folding a piece of paper