How many times have you ever needed to know how many centimeters in a kilometer? Is that something you do a lot?
On the other hand, suppose you have 1x1 km of land three children, and you want to divide the inheritance equally. What do you do? Give two of them 1km x 333.33m of land, and the oldest one 1km x 333.34m?
If you were using miles and you had 1 x 1 mile of land, you could give each one exactly 1m x 1760ft of land.
> On the other hand, suppose you have 1x1 km of land three children, and you want to divide the inheritance equally. What do you do? Give two of them 1km x 333.33m of land, and the oldest one 1km x 333.34m?
This is a silly example. You're going to give them all about a third of the land. But the precise measures are going to depend on the land. Perhaps one of them got the steep hill and a bit more to compensate. Or the creek serves as a division between child 2 and child 3 but that just so happens to mean that child 3 gets a wee bit more than half the remainder.
In any case, you aren't going to give them 1 km x 333.33 m unless the law of your state really stangely provides a maximum precision of 10 cm. The system is infinitely divisible and the survey happens once with a fair degree of precision.
There are good arguments for the convenience of non-metric systems. This one is just a terrible one.
> In any case, you aren't going to give them 1 km x 333.33 m unless the law of your state really stangely provides a maximum precision of 10 cm.
Nit: That's 1cm precision, which I chose because that's about where it should be clear to everyone that it really doesn't matter. A slightly unreasonable person might be miffed about 1m; a very unreasonable person might be miffed about 10cm; but if you're miffed about your older brother getting 1cm more than you, I think you're going into mental illness territory.
Therefore your example doesn't support your argument.
A division to 333.3+333.3+333.4 works to the satisfaction of all parties involved. You can also write 333⅓m, no-one prevents you from using fractions with the metric system.
You have the same assumption implicit in your square mile of land, as you assume everyone is satisfied with measuring to the nearest inch (or half-foot, or whatever is realistic with the measuring device).
> You can also write 333⅓m, no-one prevents you from using fractions with the metric system.
...except that nobody does. And that would pretty much void the entire point of the metric system, which is to "make the math easier" by making everything a power of 10.
> A division to 333.3+333.3+333.4 works to the satisfaction of all parties involved.
Sure, you can, but it's less satisfying.
Remember how we got here in the discussion:
A: "Miles are easier because you can divide by 3 evenly."
B: "How is the math easier? <Does math converting km to cm, miles to inches>"
Me: "How often do you convert miles to inches or km to cm, compared to how often do people have to divide distances by 3?"
I'm not saying that I think we should all stick with / switch back to using furlongs. On the whole I think having a simple universal system like the metric system is better. But there is a trade-off involved.
You give each one 33 1/3 acres. Just it's easy to make 1/3 mile by breaking it down to 1760 feet, it's easy to make 1/3 acre by breaking 660ft x 66ft down to 220ft x 66ft ([EDIT] or 660ft x 22ft, if you want to keep it 1 furrow long for easier plowing). And if you needed to, you could break one of the feet down into 1/3 foot (4 inches). That's a key factor in all these "archaic" measurement systems.
> 1m = 5280ft = 63360in
How many times have you ever needed to know how many centimeters in a kilometer? Is that something you do a lot?
On the other hand, suppose you have 1x1 km of land three children, and you want to divide the inheritance equally. What do you do? Give two of them 1km x 333.33m of land, and the oldest one 1km x 333.34m?
If you were using miles and you had 1 x 1 mile of land, you could give each one exactly 1m x 1760ft of land.