agent69
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Post by agent69 on Feb 20, 2021 11:34:43 GMT
Certain things work better with imperial. For example if you want to work with halves. So suet puddings need 4,2,1 of the key ingredients. Wood working often needs 1/2" 1/4" 1/8", 1/16", 1/32. The metrics equivalent often work out as silly dimensions. Cups, sticks... And is it 14 or 16 pounds in an ounce? It's the other way round to stones, I know that... And I now know, thanks to this thread, that it's 20 flozes in a pint. Down our way an ounce is worth 6.25p
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Post by bernythedolt on Feb 20, 2021 11:53:39 GMT
e ^ (pi * i) + 1 = 0 The five most magical numbers (e, pi, i, 0 and 1) all in one magical equation. The fabulous Euler's equation. Always had me spellbound with its simplicity and its beauty.
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Post by Badly Drawn Stickman on Feb 20, 2021 12:00:37 GMT
e ^ (pi * i) + 1 = 0 The five most magical numbers (e, pi, i, 0 and 1) all in one magical equation. The fabulous Euler's equation. Always had me spellbound with its simplicity and its beauty. Seems a lot of effort to end up with nothing.
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Post by bernythedolt on Feb 20, 2021 12:23:58 GMT
The fabulous Euler's equation. Always had me spellbound with its simplicity and its beauty. Seems a lot of effort to end up with nothing. Then Dirac's will blow your mind. You can't even type it with the font here! 😁
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Greenwood2
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Post by Greenwood2 on Feb 20, 2021 12:40:55 GMT
Certain things work better with imperial. For example if you want to work with halves. So suet puddings need 4,2,1 of the key ingredients. Wood working often needs 1/2" 1/4" 1/8", 1/16", 1/32. The metrics equivalent often work out as silly dimensions. Then metric has some useful things. A litre of water weighs 1kg, while a pint of water weighs 1 1/4 lbs. While compass roses use 360 degrees, minutes and seconds. Days still come in 24 hours and weeks come in 7 days. Circles still need Pi. From this I conclude that 10 is not a magic number so don't sweat it. 10 is most definitely not a magic number. The most "magic" numbers tend to be irrational: Pi, e. Or more esoterically, "i" . Those are numbers which genuinely contain 'magic' in them. Fractions are terribly useful. Digital Computers are fundamentally binary, so base 2 and base 16 are critical. However, there is nothing clever or no good reason for a base 12 currency system when our core number system is base 10. 12 is a useful number because it is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12, lots of options for coins. 10 is only divisible by 1, 2, 5, and 10.
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agent69
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Post by agent69 on Feb 20, 2021 12:44:02 GMT
The fabulous Euler's equation. Always had me spellbound with its simplicity and its beauty. Seems a lot of effort to end up with nothing. Bit like P2P lending
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agent69
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Post by agent69 on Feb 20, 2021 12:47:40 GMT
10 is most definitely not a magic number. The most "magic" numbers tend to be irrational: Pi, e. Or more esoterically, "i" . Those are numbers which genuinely contain 'magic' in them. Fractions are terribly useful. Digital Computers are fundamentally binary, so base 2 and base 16 are critical. However, there is nothing clever or no good reason for a base 12 currency system when our core number system is base 10. 12 is a useful number because it is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12, lots of options for coins. 10 is only divisible by 1, 2, 5, and 10. I thought 9 was the magic number
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iRobot
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Post by iRobot on Feb 20, 2021 13:17:49 GMT
12 is a useful number because it is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12, lots of options for coins. 10 is only divisible by 1, 2, 5, and 10. I thought 9 was the magic number Well 3 is a magic number - Blind Melon says it is, so it must be true.... By one of those weird coincidences, if you add up the individual digits in my date of birth (ie 20/05/1985) you get 30, then add those digits and you get 3. ' So what?!' you may justifiably query. Well ... If you ascribe a number to each letter of my full name such that a=1, b=2, c=3, etc and then add those numbers together you get 192, add those digits and you get 12, add those digits and you get 3 That's treating things like 'r' as 18 and 't' as 20, but if you take a letter's equivalent number and, for letters beyond 'i', add that number's digits together so that 'r' now becomes 9 and 't' becomes 2, then my name adds up to thirty. And three + zero is ... 3 Ain't life strange ...
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adrianc
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Post by adrianc on Feb 20, 2021 13:46:32 GMT
12 is a useful number because it is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12, lots of options for coins. 10 is only divisible by 1, 2, 5, and 10. <cough> p2pindependentforum.com/thread/18299/abolishing-cash-paymentsWe don't even really NEED all the coin options we currently have... The 1/2p went in the bin in 1984, because it was a piddly useless thing. That's rapidly approaching 40 years ago, less than a decade and a half after it was introduced. Inflation alone means that the 1984 value of 1/2p is now about 1 2/3p (or 1p now is less than 1/3p in 1984). Do we need the 1p?
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on Feb 20, 2021 15:38:05 GMT
Just as it is natural for me to drive on either side of the road/car, I can use both systems (up to a point - some Imperial measures baffle me as I previously posted). If you use them you get used to them. There is a reason we in the UK as a whole haven't gone completely SI/metric, and it is a similar reason to why we didn't sign up fully to the EU (and sadly eventually left). No one made the case strongly enough and we did it half heartedly. (etc) one reason we struggle to do it I think is we are unlikely to ever change from miles/mph for road usage. Its not something one could reasonably do incrementally but nor could one realistically do it overnight. And it will always be argued that the cost of doing so is greater than any benefits (indeed I reckon there will always be a large cohort of those willing to die in the ditch to preserve the mile and all its constituent fractions and multiples that would make it too difficult anyway). I forgot to mention in my original post the trials and tribulations of land area: for such as gardens and fields, I can only fathom them (see what I did there ?) in acres: I can never remember what a hectare is, let alone envisage it, and no sooner have I looked it up than it gets forgotten again. Until that is the area in question gets too large, at which point I'm much more comfortable working in km 2. And don't get me on the subject of describing area as the equivalent of so many football pitches. This might work in the US where a "football pitch" is of a prescribed size, but since I'm not a fan of football football, and given that those pitches are not of a prescribed size, the concept seem rather meaningless. I haven't a clue about acres, and I doubt many who use them know how much it actually is in earth currency. Square metres seems perfectly doable to me, and you can use 10x10, 100x100 (your hectare - really not so hard to remember!) or 1000x1000 (square km) as appropriate for larger areas. Anyway, looking backwards is the current zeitgeist, so any change won't happen for decades (or perhaps we should use an imperial non-metric measure of years - scores?)
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on Feb 20, 2021 15:52:45 GMT
12 is a useful number because it is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12, lots of options for coins. 10 is only divisible by 1, 2, 5, and 10. I thought 9 was the magic number 10 is a fairly useful base given how many fingers we have. For the clock take the 10 and add a twilight hour either end to get 12. Conveniently also works into quadrants in a circle (for the clock) whereas 10 doesn't. Also of ironic note is that non-decimal currencies with 20 Solidis to the Libre and 12 Denaris to the Solidi were common in all of Europe, and thus the £sd system was imported into the British Isles from the Europeans.
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IFISAcava
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Post by IFISAcava on Feb 20, 2021 16:08:43 GMT
12 is a useful number because it is divisible by 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, and 12, lots of options for coins. 10 is only divisible by 1, 2, 5, and 10. <cough> p2pindependentforum.com/thread/18299/abolishing-cash-paymentsWe don't even really NEED all the coin options we currently have... The 1/2p went in the bin in 1984, because it was a piddly useless thing. That's rapidly approaching 40 years ago, less than a decade and a half after it was introduced. Inflation alone means that the 1984 value of 1/2p is now about 1 2/3p (or 1p now is less than 1/3p in 1984). Do we need the 1p? no, but then the US dollar and the Euro still have even less valuable equivalents. EDIT: although I see that many Euro countries have stopped using the 1 and 2 cents, and they may go altogether. Again, since we in the UK are all supposed to be living in the past these days, I can't see it being a popular option here.
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Post by Companion Cube on Feb 20, 2021 16:17:22 GMT
e ^ (pi * i) + 1 = 0 The five most magical numbers (e, pi, i, 0 and 1) all in one magical equation. The fabulous Euler's equation. Always had me spellbound with its simplicity and its beauty. Don't forget the golden ratio, (also known as the divine proportion) 1.618. This appears all over the place in nature. I highly recommend googling it.
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adrianc
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Post by adrianc on Feb 20, 2021 16:21:31 GMT
Yep, they're talking about phasing the € 1c out.
Bear in mind, though, that the Euro is used in countries with far lower incomes than the UK... Latvian and Slovak average net monthly incomes are ~€850, Portugal €1,000, Greece €1,100 - so 1c is a much bigger proportion than 1p here, with €2,300.
And that's just the countries that use it officially - Kosovo and Montenegro aren't official members, but use it, and are even lower.
The yanks? Well, they still have $1 notes, bless 'em... (They got rid of the 1/2c in 1857!)
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Post by captainconfident on Feb 20, 2021 18:09:47 GMT
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