Comment by Echo Dot@feddit.uk on A private dance for 1 cent

There’s loads of currency denominations we could get rid of. We could probably just do away with the whole idea of fractions of a currency unit and just make everything 1 pound / euro / dollar

In the past a penny used to get you quite a lot, you might be able to have a meal out for a penny but now it’s literally worthless you need at least 50 of them to buy anything reasonable. No one bothers.

The UK used to have half pennies. But then the UK also used to have 144 pennies in 1 pound.

The UK used to have half pennies. But then the UK also used to have 144 pennies in 1 pound.

I gather this is imperial system related.

And/or inbred royals being in charge back then related, I bet…

It’s the square of a dozen, 12²=144.

shakes head inbred people and their characteristic love of math…

Well, Newton was English 🤷…

True. Boy George too. Also: Vinnie Jones.

12 is arguably a better arithmetic base than 10 since it divides nicely by 2, 3, 4 and 6 instead of just 2 and 5.

I wish some countries would go this way and use 12-based as a default, while others would use 8-based because it’s closer to computers, and others will continue using 10-based.

And then no-one will denote the system used because it’s the default, how’s that you don’t understand. Oh what a beautiful world we’d be living in 🥰

The point is that there are benefits to several different arithmetic bases for different purposes and forming some kind of dogma around any of them is weird.

Well, there isn’t a perfect one… better just agree on using one, whichever that might be.

Agree, so we will all just use hexadecimal since it is a convenient way to represent both fixed point and floating point arithmetic.

There is no dogma, when doing maths you’re free to use anything even as esoteric as Fibonacci base. The problem is when this becomes widespread but not everywhere.

If you’re for using it “for different purposes” I can’t even understand the point of your original comment, why preach?

I am definitely not the one being preachy about a particular base. I am the one advocating flexibility over dogma.

All I did was point out that 12 is easier to divide cleanly than ten, and this very simple fact has pissed many people off for some reason.

Yes, I do agree with that. It just takes time getting used to it.

If only we had a way to have numbers smaller than 1.

Right, having more whole, proper fractions to work with can also be simpler (and more precise) than truncating decimals and dealing with the implications of significant figures. I just don’t understand why people are so hostile to this as a basic idea. Base 12 has benefits, just like base ten does.

Yup. Keep the quarter and cut everything else.

144? It was 240. 12 pence to a shilling, 20 shillings to a pound sterling. https://www.ecosia.org/search?q=predecimalisation pound

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