Apprentice and Hex keys

I'd like to see you draw up using mental arithmetic the invoice for

I grew up "back then" and people who had to do that sort of thing routinely were bloody glad not to have to do so by hand. Even the calculators designed for Sterling usually only handled addition and subtraction. And while there were tables to convert from LSD to fractions of a pound and back again so as to use decimal calculators it weren't for the faint-hearted.

And then until 1969 there was the halfpenny.

I don't believe that was true unless you regularly handled money or played darts.

Even with people handling money the trick was not to necessarily calculate the change but to count it up from the bill amount to the amount tendered.

There was French Revolutionary Decimal Time, which "divided the day into 10 decimal hours, each decimal hour into 100 decimal minutes and each decimal minute into 100 decimal seconds".

Thomas Prufer

Even if the correct amount of sand, ballast or cement is delivered the person shoveling the the different materials into the mixer will be the thicko labourer who failed the education system and cannot get a better job.

Possibly based on the industry you are working in? I was (am) a electronic hardware designer and used base 16 extensively.

my carpenter tradesperson, who can't be over 35, calls 50 by 50mm - 2 by 2

tim

This one has his own cordless Dewalt SDS, combi and impact driver set.

And I can assure you that his parents did not pay for it.

A third year (so only 3 months into his third year) that can easily do a rewire or a new build pretty much on his own.

currently spending time with trades, I have to say that sparky looks like the best choice for people who are minded to consider trades in the first place

It's relative clean and warm job and it pays reasonably well. I paid my sparky the same for 3 man days work as the kitchen fitters got for 12, admittedly that did include materials, whereas I paid extra for the kitchen

tim

It was computers wot did it.

Sure, but even a clueless consumer comes across imperial units frequently on food, cosmetics, etc etc.

NT

They're easy, just rotate the allen key one way to release it or get it back in the spring. Which way? Whichever way tends to expand the spring widthwise.

NT

Decimal is trivial to divide by 2 or 5. Base 12 is trivial to divide by 6, 4, 3, 2. And that's why humans have used base 12 so much. Nothing to do with number of digits, it's not as if counting to 12 presents any difficulty to anyone.

NT

It does if you count on your fingers.

You need to develop shortcuts.

The more you do though, the less you need the shortcuts as you begin to recognise that 2 x 27 is 54 and similar without any intermediate stage.

SteveW

Why should they come back? If a reference to Brexit; decimalisation was before entry into the EEC and even countries like the USA are steadily moving towards metrification and SI units.

And you have to remember that for anything Japanese, they have special drivers JIS

If that is what you think then you are totally wrong.

I often come home so dirty that I need a shower before I am clean enough to have a bath (you need the bath to soak out the rest of the dirt). In winter despite wearing thermal clothing sometimes I need an hour to defrost. In fact if I know I am going to be cold then I often drive to work with the van heater on low.

Try pulling in SWA or fitting lampposts outside when it is pissing it down or snowing.

Second year apprentice quit yesterday because he could not cope with the dirt/dust/cold and he has not even done a proper dirty job or worked through a cold winter.

Base 10 doesn't really make sense with fingers. It should be base 11. 10 fingers then carry.

If you want to do base 12, borrow a couple of ears or eyes.

Owain

Doesn't make sense, use binary, up to 31 on one hand.

My daughter could count in binary on her fingers when she was about seven.