• mlfh@lemmy.ml
    link
    fedilink
    arrow-up
    77
    ·
    1 year ago

    One benefit of base 12 and base 60 over base 10 for everyday use with things like time is simple factorization. You can divide 12 hours evenly into halves, thirds, quarters, and sixths, and 60 minutes evenly into halves, thirds, quarters, fifths, sixths, tenths, etc. With base 10, you’ve just got halves and fifths.

    • kvn@midwest.social
      link
      fedilink
      English
      arrow-up
      26
      ·
      1 year ago

      Another benefit of base 12 is that you can count to 12 easily with one hand by using your thumb to count each of the 3 segments on your 4 fingers.

      I learned that on that other website prior to the great migration and it blew my mind then.

    • Squirrel@thelemmy.club
      link
      fedilink
      arrow-up
      6
      arrow-down
      2
      ·
      1 year ago

      Yeah, I know all about that, but I don’t think we’ll convince people to change everything to base 12, so let’s go with a base 10 clock.

      • Rivalarrival@lemmy.today
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        25
        ·
        1 year ago

        A base-10 unit circle would be abhorrent. 1/2 of a circle is an important concept, but 1/5th and 1/10th of a circle are rarely used in geometry or trigonometry. Meanwhile, a right angle (1/4 of a circle) would require an ugly fraction, and the angle of an equilateral triangle (1/6th) would require a repeating decimal.

        Think of 12-hour clocks and 360-degree circles as paper bags. When we’re fucking with angular concepts, you do not want to take those bags off Decimal’s head.

      • Andrew@mander.xyz
        link
        fedilink
        arrow-up
        7
        ·
        1 year ago

        I just want everything to be switched to 24 instead of 12. Why everyone want to complicate things?

        • Andrew@mander.xyz
          link
          fedilink
          arrow-up
          1
          ·
          1 year ago

          I didn’t put in a secret punchline. It’s a genuine thought. What do you think I did?

          • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
            link
            fedilink
            arrow-up
            1
            ·
            1 year ago

            Well, I thought I was replying to squirrel, but they say we’ll never get everyone to use base 12 systems so we had better just go to base 10…

            When the entire sae/imperial/whatever is either base 12 or divisible by it already.

            There’s already a perfectly good base 12 system in everyday use, but we’ll never get anyone to accept that so we gotta accept inferior base 10. See the joke?

              • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
                link
                fedilink
                arrow-up
                1
                ·
                1 year ago

                i’m reading here on .ml and it looks like my reply was to squirrel and then you replied to me. what are you seeing?

                • Andrew@mander.xyz
                  link
                  fedilink
                  arrow-up
                  1
                  ·
                  edit-2
                  1 year ago

                  Hold on. I did get notification with your comment, but… hmm… Since we both replied to the same guy, the app thought that it’s logical to send notification about “adjacent/neighbor” reply. I thought that notifications are only about direct replies. Strange. Yes, you did not replied to me. Oopsy. :)

                  P.S. I’m currently using Liftoff.

                  • bloodfart@lemmy.ml
                    link
                    fedilink
                    arrow-up
                    1
                    ·
                    1 year ago

                    that’s crazy. over here on the .ml webui deep in the weeds comments dont expand right. excited to see what kind of api call sanitization ends pu getting implemented to make instances talking to each other and to clients end up getting implemented.