If y'all want to include "maybe", we're gonna need to move to trinary. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

No, just a 2-bit field.

I had almost forgotten about this thread that I started. Great posts, folks! I still think that SI units are the way to go. If somebody does not want to learn SI units, he or she (she or he?) should stay far away from the sciences.

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Of course, English measurements are kind of cute (quaint), but they do not have much scientific utility.

ljbrs [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_frown.gif[/img] [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_frown.gif[/img]

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"There is in the universe neither center nor circumference." Giordano Bruno Born 1548. Torched 1600.

How about octal as a compromise?

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Everything I need to know I learned through Googling.

I always enjoyed doing the double conversion for the price of gold from $US/USoz to local currency per kilogram.
God bless the USA.

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Does earth plug a hole in Heaven or Heaven plug a hole in Earth? -Peter Gabriel

Yeahbut!

Gold is not priced in $US/USoz. It is priced in $US/troy oz.

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Any day you wake up on "the right side of the dirt" is a good day.

T. Anderson

Yep! Hence the correct answer to "What weighs more, a pound of gold or a pound of feathers?" is, in fact, the pound of feathers . . . [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

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SeanF

"Ask to understand, but don't challenge unless you have the knowledge."--NEOWatcher

The contents of this post are ©2008 by SeanF and may not be copied or retransmitted in any form without the express written consent of SeanF

But I'd rather have the pound of gold. You can keep the feathers. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_biggrin.gif[/img]

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...And that, my liege, is how we know the Earth to be banana-shaped. --Sir Bedevere

Yahbut, an ounce of gold is heavier than an ounce of feathers...

TROY OUNCES. Consarn it!! Any wonder I'm broke. Another conspiracy.

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Does earth plug a hole in Heaven or Heaven plug a hole in Earth? -Peter Gabriel

I agree that in the US it is hard to use metric, since almost everything is either in standard US measurement only or in both systems, but the metric in small print. I do have a quirk though. I estimate distance in meters, since that is how I was taught in the U.S. Army Infantry. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] In everything else, I use the US system.

Kizarvexis
I also use the 24 hour clock and this annoys my wife. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img] The kids are learning the 24 hour clock though. [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

How about that - a troy pound = 1.215 standard pounds.

By the way, all of you measurement nuts should get yourselves a copy of "Measure for Measure" by Young and Glover, a handy little pocket book which covers standard, English and all kinds of measurements from antiquity. If you want to know that there are 0.158 scruples in a carat, this is where you find it.

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg...glance&s=books

on airplanes, it's "english", xcept russians who use metric.
and that may explain why soooo many accidents with russian planes: pilots got confused.
unless it's reliablity ? [img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

No, a standard pound = 1.215 troy pounds.

And a standard ounce = .9115 troy ounce.

The Metric System can be useful. I use it when I want to be annoying. Like when someone asks me how tall I am or how much I weigh when it's really none of their business.

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About the bases... I wonder what's so great about base 60? I personally like to write my numbers with one symbol per digit. As he was saying, people like to divide things into halves, thirds, quarters. So why not take the least common multiple of 2,3,4? It's 12 (2*2*3), only 2 more symbols needed. I myself wouldn't mind doing away with a 5 factor, if it meant having base 12 rather than 60.

But divisions into five have been the basis of our number system for so long...it'd be a shame to quit now. Just my two cents.

You can use base 60 and still have only one symbol per digit. You just need to memorize a whole lot of numerals. But it would still be a lot simpler than, say, Chinese writing, which has several thousand characters in common use.

Of course, those of us who write real software (in Assembly) know that the only truly useful number system is hexadecimal.

There are 10 types of people in this world.
Those who understand binary, and those who don't.

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Does earth plug a hole in Heaven or Heaven plug a hole in Earth? -Peter Gabriel

Some even advocate balanced ternary...[img]/phpBB/images/smiles/icon_smile.gif[/img]

Yeah airplanes use english units excepts the airspeed is in knots and not mph and distance is in nautical miles and standard miles depending on where you look. Of course some planes also measure airspeed with a mach meter as well.

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