[Houshalter]

28 is perfect because it's divisible by 7. So every day lands on the same day of every month and every year. Every 1rst is a Sunday.

But really, while we are on the topic of reform, is there any particular reason the week should be 7 days? Or that there should be a week at all?

Time keeping is also weird. Base 24 and 60 is so arbitrary. Make it base ten, and you can express date and time easily. Right now is 6.976. The 9 is the hour, the 76 is the minute, etc.

And then if we are talking about radical standards reform, let's do away with base 10 entirely and go to 12. It carries more precision in less space, is much more divisible, and has more patterns in the multiplication tables.

I love thinking about how more optimal the world could be if not for coordination problems and other issues.

[m_eiman]

Every 1rst is a Sunday.

Except the week starts with Monday. At least in the civilized world…

[grzm]

ISO, and many places, yes, but not everywhere. Is it necessary to add "At least in the civilized world"? Seems unnecessarily inflammatory. And the gp is proposing a new system anyway.

[m_eiman]

The point was that the proposal is based on assumptions that don't hold true in ever culture, but would be forced onto those cultures if it were implemented. This is of course true for most, if not all, proposals for changing the way we handle time.

According to Wikipedia there are at least three "first day of the week" in use, sorted by (my assumption of) affected population:

Monday: EU and most of other European countries, most of Asia and Oceania

Sunday: Canada, USA, Korea, Japan, Israel, South Africa, most of Latin America

Saturday: Much of the Middle East

[Nition]

Wikipedia says the first day of the week in New Zealand is Monday, but our calendars usually start on Sunday and personally at least, I've always thought of Sunday as the first day of the week. So I'm not sure I'd trust that page too well.

[Houshalter]

It's really not important at all... The point is this calendar would line up the week cycle with the month cycle, which has a ton of advantages. You can't throw that away just because you can't agree what day of the week should come first.

Hell, while we are at it we can just rename the days firstday, secondday, etc, and not have to deal with that issue.

[scottmf]

You want to switch time to base 10 and everything else to base 12 even though you consider it to be arbitrary?

We use 12, 60 (and 360deg) because our fingers are divided into 12 sections on the palm side.

You can use your thumb to point to each section on your right hand, counting to 12, while using the number of fingers on your left hand to keep track of how many 12s (up to 5) hence base 60.

[grzm]

This sounds interesting, but I'm skeptical. 12, 60, and 360 have nice mathematical properties independent of human morphology. Do you have references to cite this?

[scottmf]

The articles I've read all seem to cite print books. The Wiki articles on finger counting, and duodecimal list some:

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Duodecimal

[grzm]

Thanks for the reference! Not convinced that this is the sole reason, but it is interesting nonetheless.

[Houshalter]

I want to switch time to whatever base people use. If we switch to superior base 12, we should also switch to superior base 12 clocks.

[wan23]

Your radical time standard reform undoes your first change - it's already based on the number 12, remember? 24 is two 12-hour periods - A.M. and P.M. and 60 minutes/seconds is 12 five-minute/second periods (the numbers on a clock).

[Houshalter]

It's based on 24, which is divisible by 12. But that's not quite the same as having a clock that is based on the base you use. A base 12 clock would work just like a decimal clock, just with 2 extra symbols. It would not look like the base 24 clock with base 60 minutes and base 60 seconds.

[restalis]

Having 7-days week concept is not necessary. That 28 days being divisible by 7 can be used to create a smaller group of days that we currently use for week. I presume that in such a 4-days group the ratio of 3 days for work and 1 for leisure should both increase the efficiency and to thin out the work stress.

[Asooka]

Having Sunday as the first day would mess up our week, because we call Tuesday, Thursday and Friday second, fourth and fifth respectively. If you really want 1st each month to be first day of week, either America will have to adopt Monday as first, or vary the day of week by region.

[filmor]

Wednesday is called "Mittwoch" in German, which is a shortened form of "middle of the week". Only works if Sunday is the first day of the week, though the common convention is also having the week start on Monday. Confused me quite a bit as a child :)

[usrusr]

Middle of the working days part of the week, no need to go all American and make half of the weekend the beginning!

[galfarragem]

The same in Portuguese: Monday = Segunda (Second); Tuesday = Terça (Third) and successively till Friday = Sexta (Sixth).

[mark-r]

When I was a kid, I toyed with the idea of metric time. I realized it wouldn't work when I thought about TV shows - a 30 minute show would need to be condensed into 2 14.4 minute centi-days. That would require losing 1.2 minutes of commercials, never gonna happen.

[Houshalter]

A half hour in decimal time (half a deciday), would be 72 minutes normal time. A quarter decimal hour/deciday would be 36 normal minutes, which is pretty close and gives even more time for ads.

You could also split time further into thirds, which would work even better with a base 12 system.

[mark-r]

I assumed you'd be breaking the units into tenths all the way down, not quarters as you advocate here. Would certainly solve the problem though, maybe even too well.

[Houshalter]

The units are based on 10, but nothing stops people from dividing it further. Just as someone might use a unit of "half a kilometer" or "half a liter", which are other base 10 units.

[mark-r]

After giving this some more thought, I realize you're right. We already deal with programs starting on xx:30, now we'd just get used to things starting at x.25, x.50, and x.75. Instead of running from 8:00 to 8:30 PM, a show might run from 8.00 to 8.25.

6 minutes is too much time though, if you tried to fill that with ads you'd lose your audience fast.

Dividing into thirds doesn't really work in a decimal system.

[rocqua]

A 7 day work week seems to be optimal for most. Specifically, the 5 days on / 2 off. Apparently, medical staff working 10 / 4 have issues, and attempts at running e.g. 7/3 also don't go over very well.

[mhurron]

That's only if a 40 hour week is the optimum. Since no one is really working 8 hours, 5 days a week, that's doubtful.

[Kadin]

The 40-hour workweek is a direct function of (1) that it's advantageous to have the fewest employees possible, because each additional employee has overhead costs; (2) you can't make employees work more than 8 hours/day (a number that was arrived at through significant strife and is unlikely to change substantially); (3) everyone gets two days off in a 7-day period.

The 40-hour workweek isn't an arbitrary quantity, it's an empirically derived quantity. And the process of deriving it literally involved people killing each other. I don't see it changing very soon, except in edge cases.

[reflexive]

> let's do away with base 10 entirely and go to 12

Why not hexadecimal, to help accelerate the singularity?

[fsiefken]

12 is the most optimal and usable base for humans - James Grime explains it at Numberphile: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6xJfP7-HCc