Ed Pawlowski wrote:

:
: Why should we change _anything_?

: Dollars are 10 based, just like metric, and it works. You seem to think is
: is bizarre.


Well, it's base 10, like the metric/SAI system (actually the dollar is
base 100, as witness the penny, the nickel, and the 25-cent and
50-cent pieces, none of which correspond to a power-of-ten division
of a dollar).

There's two separate things in the metric/Imperial debate (aka the wrong
vs. right way debate). These often get confused.

One is the numeric base. The Imperial system is a mix of base 12 and base
16. Metric is base 10. It's easier to divide Imperial units into thirds,
quarters, and so on than metric; and easier to divide metric amounts by
powers of 10. Both 12 and 16 have more integral divisors than 10 does,
and so Imperial makes it easier, one may argue, to divide lengths and
areas and so on into equal-sized parts.

The other is the relative utility/ergonomicness/intuitiveness of the size
of the basic units. In metric, the basic unit is the gram and kilogram;
the millimeter and meter; and so on. tghere is a 1000-fold jump between
the official units.

Some people feel, and I am one of
them, that these central units are clunky, too far apart in their ratios,
and don't corespond to the size discriminations I find useful to make.

Money is a very different thing, in that's it's a totally abstract system,
and isn't subject to the same usability constraints that physical
measurement systems are.


-- Andy Barss