• frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml
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    8 months ago

    “wait, what is 5/8 + 3/16 + 1 7/64?”

    Those are so easily commensurable! It’s 1 and 59/64 obv.

    It’s set up to make this easy.

    Let me ask: do you think people have usedit for hundreds of years for no reason?

    • Paradoxvoid@aussie.zone
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      8 months ago

      Those are so easily commensurable! It’s 1 and 59/64 obv.

      I legit can’t tell if this is sarcasm.

      • frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml
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        8 months ago

        “wait, what is 5/8 + 3/16 + 1 7/64?”

        In binary it’s 0.101 + 0.0011 + 1.000111, or laid out vertically:

        0.101
        0.0011
        1.000111
        =
        1.111011
        

        Halving numbers is no harder than decimating them, probably easier for most of us. Even computer scientists don’t think of base-10 as The Way The Truth and The Light; they use base-2 or base-16 for various things.

        Decimal/base-ten is fine as a convention, but insisting that One Convention is perfect and others are heretical is stupid.

        • Paradoxvoid@aussie.zone
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          8 months ago

          You do you, but if you’re reverting to binary to explain how simple it is to add values together, I think you’ve made a wrong turn somewhere.

          • frightful_hobgoblin@lemmy.ml
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            8 months ago

            halving is a really easy mental operation; we do it all the time mentally and with physical things like bits of food or drink or folding a piece of paper