Quote:
Originally Posted by issybird
I prefer the imperial system for two reasons, both related to its utility for the average person. The units are useful gradations; e.g., inches, feet, yards and cup, pint, quart, gallon, as opposed to going from too small to too large. They’re also readily divisible by two, three and four as opposed to two, five and ten.
Anthony Burgess argued that LSD was preferable to decimal coinage because it also allowed for division by seven, as in the days of the week, but I’m not prepared to go that far!
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pdurrant
I suspect you prefer imperial because it's what you're used to. I am familiar with both.
Americans can't complain about ISO units going from too small to too large so long as they continue to only measure their weight in pounds. 
£1 = 20 shillings = 240 pennies. No divisibility by seven that I can see. |
Using a base of 10 (and powers of 10) is one of the weaknesses of the Metric System since it only has the factors of 1, 5, and 10, you end up with fractions for the common divisions except for one-half.
With Customary Units, I think the main issue is the inconsistent between the units, not that they are not based on 10. The other complicating factor is when it comes to ounces since there are so many versions of them.
In my opinion, 12 is a better base for a measurement system since it has so many factors, but 6 is also a good option.