• fallingcats@discuss.tchncs.de
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    6 hours ago

    Woodworkers don’t traditionally cut boards to 1 inch or 2 inches thick; they’re rough sawn to that thickness and then dried and milled to 3/4" or 1 1/2". Which are 1/16th or 1/8th of a foot, and both are divisible by 2 and 3 and expressed in a power-of-two fraction. a third of 3/4" is 1/4".

    Okay but then that third is more of a lucky coincidence than a function of the measurement system. That’s like saying millimeters are good for woodworking because boards are traditionally milled to, say 18mm (incidentally almost equal to ¾") and you can divide that by 2, 3, 4, 6 and 9.

    And I’d argue, dealing with fractions is still fundamentally harder. They number sometimes are or aren’t convenient independent of the system used.