What's that thumbnail? It looks like a fever dream.

The best thing about this video is that most people that have seen it, by half of it they are thinking "why am I losing my time watching at this? 🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣

There's a time and a place for metric... mostly scientific stuff. Machinists can have decimal inches and thousandths. Pretty much anything else, though... feet and inches make way more sense. The versatility of not just fractions, but just of relatable, practical sizes. Measure a car, or a room, and you have many hundreds of centimeters... or a convenient 15 feet. You could use meters, then you're inconvenienced by at least one decimal place if you want even a semblance of accuracy. And if you have something big enough to measure in meters... you've got yards, which are practically the same.

"Deranged Scotsman" and "Bovril". Ah yes, My favorite engine-room commands.

the suit jacket.

Where do you plug into the OBD1 port when the "Check Engine" light comes on?

yes! base 12 is awesome. It really should be the base for human use.

I think any base system that is consistent and that everyone uses, is the best one. U.S. ("imperial") is horrible (I'm American) in this regard. We use fractions here, decimals there; base 10 here, base 12 there, units based on the length of some dude's toenail in 1627. Even within the same unit, even on the same drawing, fasteners might be called out like 7/16" while thickness of the washers for that fastener are called out in thousandths of an inch. This is where the metric system wins. It's consistent and everyone (except Americans) uses it. Base 10 might not be the most optimal system but the time for objections to it is long past. Everyone intuitively understands it already so that is how it is going to stay. P.s. the base 12 runes didn't even seem consistent. 1, 2, and 3 did, the number of lines is the number, but after that it fell apart. After 3 we start counting angles? Or? You lost me.

Love what you’re doing. More long form detailed videos are needed!!! Keep it up.

I, too, saw the water works video and discovered you. Love your style!

As kid growing up, I was taught and agreed, that metric base-10 was obviously the superior system. A bachelors and masters degree in engineering only reinforced that. However as I have grown older and taken to hobbies that put me to work with my hands I have come to see the benefits of the older systems. Older systems are base two (a gallon is 2^7 Oz) or base 12 (degrees on a circle, time) or the way we divide inches (base 2). If you are doing hand work, division into halves and thirds is easy and can be done with a marking device and protractor or string. Base ten metric is nice for working in base 10 math but with calculators and computers easy base ten multiplication and division is less important. Getting into a full base twelve mathematics may be more than my middle aged brain wants to deal with though.

So, binary then. Two is divisible by one, so _all_ digits are covered by factor pairs. And for ‘meaningful’ digits we can use ○ and ●.

"So you can do lots of fractions in your head" Sure, you go right ahead and multiply 463in base-12 by 3/64th and then divide that by 23 in base-12. Go! The "advantage" of 12 being more divisible is only there if you actually have 12 of something. That's how we got to the foot being 12 inches, and an hour having 60 minutes. Nice and divisible. Ofcourse if you want to know how many inches there are in 1+19/32 of a mile then you're kind of f*cked, but at least you can divide 12 easier! Also note that even in clocks, where we actually DO divide the hour alot, we use tenths of seconds, of 60th. we use 100ths of a second, not 1/60th/60th. There is a reason for that and it is " the math is impossible". Even the UK, who had base-12 for their money but gave up on it. They had a pound that was 240 shillings and 12 pennies to the shilling. Very divisible, until you had 315 pennies,148 shillings and had to pay a pound. Good luck with that. There is a reason by metric is the dominant system and it's that in the real world it is simply easier to work with. It's not political, it's just easier. I know you want to have an easy way to divide by three, but YOU DON'T DO THAT. Sure, you can think of edge cases where it's simpler with base-12, but the fact that you have to go to edge-cases to show how great your idea is means it's not a great idea. Think of it as Toki-Pono, the language that only has 200 words. It's MUCH easier to learn than the thousands of words of other languages, its grammar is laughably simple, but saying "I am going on holiday and I'm taking the big red bucket that my grandmother gave to me in the spring of 1998" takes half a page because you have to combine a thousands words to alter their meaning to collectively represent that sentence.

Could have been worse. We could have been relegated to measuring in _smoots._

Yikes this is scary. How is it possible I'm not the only one?

You are getting rather complicated in the description. Rational arithmetic is exact. It is all ratios of integers. If you want to express many of the useful ratios exactly, 12 is your number. With 12 you can make a ruler by folding. Also, the French Metric, now called SI, uses an impractical naming scheme with measure smaller than one being Greek and larger than 1 being Latin, because the intended elite users all have studied Latin and Greek. However in any workplace or setting where transcription errors or noise are possible, the multi-syllable words that all sound the same are ridiculous. The American Customary and the Imperials have simple one syllable words that can not be mistaken. No one hears "inch" and says I thought you said yards. And the scale is for humans. Now, the geniuses of the short-lived French Revolution COULD have picked one of the standard yards (I would have used the one in London) and said we are adding a second set of divisions based on multiples of 10 in which case we call it a meter and 1 meter = 1 yard, and all would be sweetness and light today. But Noooo, they had a better idea! Lets take the distance from the equator to the North Pole and divide it by one million and call that one meter. What could be easier? A complete up-their-own-backsides jackass idea. As a side note, take a look at the knobs on measuring instruments like an oscilloscope. The scales run 1, 2, 5, 10, 20, 50, 100 etc. Why? Because factors of 10 are too damn big!

Base 10 System International benefits were eliminated by the development of pocket calculators which were then made obsolete by the pocket computer-communicator. Most metric fans I've experienced cannot process fractions. Absolutely cannot determine if 5/8 is larger or smaller than 3/4 without a calculator. These are the irrational people of the world

Better than - one fithty thousands of an inch cuz you can't have smaller measumerment than inch in imperial apparently.... yet, in metric you can go as low as nanometres and picometres... without needing supidity of 1/1000000000000000000000000000000000000 of centimetre when buying a drill bit, another stupidity is gallons and pints and all that bullshit - 1litre is 1000 mililitres it's not 3/4 and it's not 1 by something of something... plus our hands have 10 fingers and that's where 10 comes from so imperial can f**k themselves unless their hands have 1/34 of finger on a hand

I was gonna make some comment about dollars being base 10. But than I realized you guys can't count money, because you need to add the tax! oh, well

I can not explain the understanding I just got from this 14 minute video that I stumbled upon looking for something else!!!! And to think that you just uploaded this yesterday!!! Mind blowing 🤯

Every time I have made a UI slider I use 0-60 so that 1/3rd is an option. Because I can. If the Babylonians handled base 60 then we can.

Wait what the actual???? first you start your argument by explaining divisions by half, but then at @9:30 you first divide by half and then by thirds? Just to end up at 12???? As far as the actual argument was valid (which it is not), you just destroyed the logic with that diagram. That is, if you haven't lost the viewer already with those weird symbol representations. Well you lost me already half way, but I wanted to see how much deeper one could dig. You know that the entire premise of base 10, is simply shifting the comma or adding zeros? Shifting commas and not having to deal with fractions is why base 10 math is so much more easier. Not to mention our entire language is based around base 10. We do not have a different symbol for 10 and 11, or some word. We represent base 12 in our language using base 10 words. 12 time 12 is one hundred and forty four, nothing else. You even use the word twelve, a base 10 word representing decimal 10 plus 2 Hexidecimal on the other hand is presented using letters. And only when the number rolls over you get another digit. Easy for computers, but hard to comprehend for humans because we use base 10 in our speech.

You Americans will do ANYTHING to justify measurement weirdness. Just adopt decimals, ffs, it's not hard

I concur. Base 10 metric does suck, for many of the reasons you presented. However it’s not necessary to reinvent the imperial system, or contrive a base 12 integer set. Inches are divided into fractions. They can be any sort of fraction you like, it’s just that they’re usually denoted and divided in 2, 4,8,16,etc as an optimally convenient standard. Like time signatures in music. Not all time signatures are optimally written that way either, but most of it is. I think it’s important to point out that imperial measurement system isn’t so arbitrary or primitive. Rather it’s an elegant collection of units, optimized for applicable utility, like a toolbox, as opposed to base 10 metric, which endeavors to standardized and universalize units, at the cost of being like Swiss Army Knife, lots of tools conveniently packaged into one, but none of the features perform as well as a dedicated tool would. ❤

@TheFatElectrician is loving this!!! Freedom units

Neither metric nor imperial. A base 12 metric system. Very interesting. All number bases are trade offs, binary and hex are too unwieldy for normal use, but have huge advantages in computing. The Sumerians used base 60 which persists in some applications to this day. Thanks

I think in a more optimal world we should use the metric system in base 12. It does suck to not be able to divide by 3, 6 or 4, which is a very common operation.

Feel free to use fractions with metric. I'm sure the units won't complain 😋

14 also has 5 and 2

The point of a measuring is to make thing accurate enough to do the work required, and almost as importantly create wide standardization. At some point, and sooner rather than later for any reasonable value denominator to work with, you run out of whole factors. At that point you are using either fractions or decimals. Either work, the question is which works better for you so you make fewest mistakes. I have proven that mistakes can be made with fractions and decimals, but the more resolution required the less mistakes I make with decimals, which seems to be true for most people (Most U.S. machinists who work in accuracies less than 1/64" use decimals...even while remaining in the U.S. customary system). And by the way the fundamental feature of the S.I. system is standardization in unit definitions as well as expression; base 10, specifically base 10 with using decimals not fractions, was chosen because it is the simplest way of standardizing the expression of any value regardless of magnitude. It is a common mistake that people think the primary purpose for using SI is the base 10 system of expression, it is useful, but the real importance for the SI system over the imperial, or more accurately theses days US customary system, is standardization.

I think language is too big a barrier to use any number system other than base 10. The words we used are based arround base 10, so we think in base 10.

Yawn, yep you're boring me too. Metric all the way.

If base ten for measuring carpentry was a good thing there would be 1/10" marks on our rulers and the rulers would be 10" to a foot; but they're not because of the reasons the guy talks about.

How about going with a bakers dozen

omg.....

The world knew the beauty of base 12... then crazy french leftists changed it all to base 10 for political gain and spread around the world with the education system

I'm downloading this video before big base 10 finds out about it.

You need multiple perspectives to see in multiple dimensions and the same thing applies in math. At the end of the day you are just carving up a sphere into little parts that work for you. For example, Ocean Navigation is based on measurements that apply to boats, the people that work them, and the tools they have available, hence the Knot.

LOL!

Metric is no worse, OR better than, ANY other arbitrary system of measurement. I get a kick out of the "Euros" thinking they have to translate metric to imperial. It's OK boys I "speak" both.

12ths were originally used for everything including inches and of course we still have a dozen eggs, 12 months, 24hr days, 360deg in a circle or a compass heading and so on. For the common person 12 is much better for dividing things up. If you are a technical field e.g. a machinist you have to do math any way around it and like their metric counterparts imperial machinists use 10ths, 100ths, 1000ths, ... The solution to most problems there is to toss the excess to get to some reasonably divisible number. If you are making a cabinet with 3 evenly spaced doors into a space that doesn't divide nicely you pick a smaller number that does and then pad out the difference in spaces on the sides or between the doors or both. Base2 is super handy for small (space efficient) representation and for on/off (binary) storage which is why it is used for computing. Hex, decimal, and octal in this case are representations of some binary state of data on a computer. You can also count much higher than 5 on one hand using base 2.

The ease of decimalization and multiplication by powers of ten is one of the strengths of metric IMO.

Bonjour, Just for information : "Tito Livio Burattini (Italian scholar), who called "metro cattolico" (in Misura Universale, 1675) the length of the pendulum beating the second, thus giving, well before Borda, the name "meter" to a unit." Amicalement, Raphaël

You guys should be running the country

I just learned

merh

its really more the difference between fractional and decimal and less the difference between 10s and 12s. also 1 can be prime without much extra work but zero can't be unless you are ready to change a whole lot of things.

Kiddo loves the videos on old machines already. Wait until he hears his complaints about how he's being taught math articulated better than "this is stupid and confusing" while doing exactly this in his head. Love the little guy, even when hates something he is great at and will need if he wants be an astronomer. I'm more of a further historian and taught him Sumerian base 12. So much easier.

Literally woke up, got coffee and watched this. The fact that it actually made sense it's got something going for it.....Due to age and being in Australia I work with both imperial and metric or a mix of both and don't think about such things

Can the metric system solve for Pie?