[runarberg]

People normally just use the subunit which doesn’t divide. E.g. height is usually referred to in cm. If accuracy is important they use millimeters. Roadsigns for cars use km but downtown wayfinding signs for pedastrians use meters.

I agree it is really nice to use base-12 until it brakes, but it brakes much worse then metric. If you have to divide into 32nds everything about feet and inches is much worse (in metrics we would just use millimeters). The worst offender are wrenches which don’t order intuitively. In metric, if you 13 mm wrench is too big, you just grab an 11 mm wrench. In inches if your 13/16th inch wrench is too big, do you grab the 5/8th? or three-quarters next?

[ryukoposting]

Stepping down to the next unit doesn't necessarily make anything tidier. If I need to cut a 3.5-foot piece of wood into thirds, then I cut it into 14-inch pieces. If I need to cut a 1-meter piece of wood into thirds, I cut it into 33.3-centimeter pieces.

Or, perhaps I want to hang two photos on a wall, spacing them evenly - the math from the example above applies again.

Regarding your example of dividing 12 into 32 parts - I think that's another good example of the elegance of imperial units. Dividing a foot into 32 parts is 3/8 of an inch! A nice, tidy unit that you'll find on any ruler or measuring tape.

>In inches if your 13/16th inch wrench is too big, do you grab the 5/8th? or three-quarters next?

Neither - I'd grab the 25/32" wrench ;) You make a good point.

I will say that fractional units become more and more intuitive as you use them more often. In a pinch you can just multiply both parts of the fraction by two.

Here's the thing: with wrenches in fractional units, you can do a binary search. Let's say you start with the 1/2 inch wrench. Too small? grab the 3/4. Too big? Try the 1/4. Work your way down.

...or, just remember that a huge share of bolts you'll come by are 7/16" and just start there.

[runarberg]

I actually agree. The base-12 fractional system is very nice to work with, until it brakes, and it brakes much worse than the metric system. I actually explained in another post that if the USA were to move to metric, I think the construction industry will still be using feet and inches for at least a couple of generations (at least partially), and they would have a good reason to.

The way the metric system brakes isn’t actually all that bad, at worst you grab a calculator and write down the number.

And also bare in mind that this case is where feet and inches really shines, so we are comparing feet+inches at their best to metric at it’s worst. There are so many cases where metric is anywhere from marginally better to significantly better which does make up for that.

IMO the most significant reason for metric being superior is the universality of it. It is used everywhere in the world, including the USA, and that is an excellent quality of a measurement system which should not be understated.