> You have: 17 yards + 2 feet + 5 inches
Measuring things like this seems brain dead.
Measuring things like this seems brain dead.
Though imperial-system users don't mix units like that, it's not like "20 minutes 30 seconds", they just use fractions or decimals as appropriate. "20 and a half minutes" or "20.5 minutes". You'd just say "17.8 yards".
(Metric user here, with an appreciation for base 12)
You have: QuedraTim
You want: hour
* 1
/ 1
You have: QuedraTim
You want: minutes
* 60
/ 0.016666667
You have: TrinaTim
You want: minutes
* 5
/ 0.2
You have: DunaTim
You want: minutes;seconds
25 seconds
You have: QuenaTim
You want: hour
* 12
/ 0.083333333
You have: Grafut
You want:
Definition: gravity Tim^2 = 0.29558045 m
You have: QuedraGrafut
You want:
Definition: 12^4 Grafut = 6129.1562 mnobody has a tape measure marked in decimal yards or decimal feet, so nobody is going to say 17.8 feet or 17.8 yards
sexagesimal system users also mix units like this: 2 hours, 10 minutes, and 5.2 seconds
same for larger units of time: 5 years, 2 months, and 12 days (which is an example units(1) can't hack)
As a physics undergrad I had a fascinating discussion with a lecturer on metrology. I always used SI units, my friend always preferred natural units, and the lecturer used gaussian units frequently (which always threw me off).
My position was that SI is the only reasonable measuring system because it’s a widely accepted standard, has no silly conversions, and bears resemblance to things we experience in every day life. I can space my hands apart by a metre through guesswork and I’m generally quite close, but centimetres or inches I’m awful at (any excuse, eh?). I can judge how many kilograms something is but not grams or pounds.
“Ah,” said the lecturer. “But these are units you are familiar with because they match your everyday experiences. In mine, statVolts etc are the most natural thing in the world - I don’t have constants where I don’t need them, and my numerical results are at a comfortable order of magnitude”.
“The most natural thing in the world are the universal constants - planck’s constant, the speed of light, the charge on an electron”, countered my friend. “If I measured something in those, anyone or anything in the universe, under any physical conditions, can recreate my measurements. If civilisation ended and my calculations were discovered millions of years later by an entirely new intelligent species, they would understand it with enough legwork”.
I quickly became a proponent of natural units. But then 50mph signs being renamed to 7.46e-8 might not go down well with the highways agency.
Anyway, the point of this story is that measurements are measurements, as long as they’re consistent. It isn’t about intellect, it’s about what you’re working with, what you normally work with, culture, and all kinds of things. If you have a 17 yard thingamagig and need 2ft clearance on one side and 5in clearance in the other, then this is a perfectly reasonable task to ask a computer with a teraflop or so of computational power.