What is it with round numbers?
- Thread starter ClichéGuevara
- Start date
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T4tomo
Legendary Member
OOH but imagine getting your eddington to 99 and then seeing you needed to 50 rides of 100miles to get it over the ton?
I got pulled up by a km measurer for stopping short of 50km or 100km once but I read in miles
Electric_Andy
Heavy Metal Fan
- Location
- Plymouth
I think it's fairly logical up to a point. Things (birthday wise) seem to start at 16, as this used to mean that you could get married or get a full-time job. 17 is sometimes made a fuss of, but only because of the UK driving age. 18 of course is a big one because it means you're legally an adult. I have no idea where 21comes from; maybe an Americanism due to the alcohol laws in some states? But it seems fairly arbitrary to me.
I think 30, 40, 50 etc are just there because we're entering a new decade of our lives, and as said before we count in tens becasue we have 10 fingers. Let's face it, when you've been 40 something for 9 years it's nice to have an excuse for a birthday bash!
I think 30, 40, 50 etc are just there because we're entering a new decade of our lives, and as said before we count in tens becasue we have 10 fingers. Let's face it, when you've been 40 something for 9 years it's nice to have an excuse for a birthday bash!
- Location
- Somewhere wet & hilly in NW England.
If it is all about fingers and thumbs, Base 10 must be problematic in Deliverance County.
Ming the Merciless
There is no mercy
- Location
- Inside my skull
Clocks and watches are in base 60.
Illaveago
Guru
- Location
- Chippenham,Wiltshire.
It's a b****r when at the end of the year when you add them all up !
- Location
- Somewhere wet & hilly in NW England.
Ah yes, the ongoing Babylonian influence - little did the buggers know that millenia later little old me would have to puzzle over Excel time based formulas on my cycling spreadsheet because of them.
And, maybe they were big on threesomes back then - can't think of any other reason why Base 60 would appear on their radar.
Alex321
Guru
- Location
- South Wales
21 was the age of majority in the UK until 1970, when it was changed to 18.
I still remember that change, as I was 11 at the time, and it meant I would become an adult 3 years earlier ( in January 1977) than had been the case
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ClichéGuevara
Legendary Member
- Location
- Kingston upon the River Hull
I think the time/clock thing was based on how to divide a circle, and other counting systems involved the knuckles on the fingers, and the ease of dividing certain numbers into smaller ones, which base 10 doesn't always do.
I did read somewhere that our train size aligns back to the size of a horses backside, as that set the width of cart wheels, and then carts that became the determining factor for track sizes of 4 foot eight and a half inches.
Then again, I could be totally wrong, and it could all just be someone's warped sense of humour.
a.twiddler
Veteran
It's an interesting human phenomenon. Probably the only creature on the planet to be obsessional about numbers (just because we can) but we have evolved to have 10 fingers and 10 toes so unless it's just an amazing coincidence, in our culture at least we have a number base of 10 using arabic numerals.
When it comes to measurements and money though, historically it hasn't always been like that As a child at primary school as well as chanting times tables we had to go through measurements, 12 inches in a foot, weights, 16 ounces in a pound, and money 12 pennies in a shilling, etc.
Although our time system seems to have come from the ancient Babylonians who had a base of 60 so we get 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, we have days, weeks, months which are different. Around the time of Napoleon as well as developing the Metric system the French tried to metricate time, but that never took off.
If all these systems come from an innate human tendency to make sense of the world and create some sort of order, it's easy to see that we all have this in some degree, even to the extent of OCD. Not stepping on cracks in the pavement, arranging things in certain ways and wanting things to end in nicely rounded numbers for the sake of completeness.
Perhaps it's just as well we don't use Roman numerals for everyday purposes. Imagine how big your bike computer would have to be to accommodate some of the combinations of letters.
When it comes to measurements and money though, historically it hasn't always been like that As a child at primary school as well as chanting times tables we had to go through measurements, 12 inches in a foot, weights, 16 ounces in a pound, and money 12 pennies in a shilling, etc.
Although our time system seems to have come from the ancient Babylonians who had a base of 60 so we get 60 seconds in a minute, 60 minutes in an hour, we have days, weeks, months which are different. Around the time of Napoleon as well as developing the Metric system the French tried to metricate time, but that never took off.
If all these systems come from an innate human tendency to make sense of the world and create some sort of order, it's easy to see that we all have this in some degree, even to the extent of OCD. Not stepping on cracks in the pavement, arranging things in certain ways and wanting things to end in nicely rounded numbers for the sake of completeness.
Perhaps it's just as well we don't use Roman numerals for everyday purposes. Imagine how big your bike computer would have to be to accommodate some of the combinations of letters.
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ClichéGuevara
Legendary Member
- Location
- Kingston upon the River Hull
Many moons ago, I recall reading about a group in one country whose numbering system was effectively 1, 2, lots. Which sounds bad, but when you think about it, if someone says something is a million pounds, we tend to think 'that's a lot', but then think exactly the same if it's a billion or a trillion pounds.
It went on to explain a society that didn't have any numbers at all, which again, isn't that bizarre if you consider the 'calculations' we make many times a day, such as how much pressure to apply to a brake lever in order to come to a halt at a given point, yet we'll have no 'numbers' at all in mind.
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ClichéGuevara
Legendary Member
- Location
- Kingston upon the River Hull
Aye, like when we changed from the Foot to the Milliband. (soz for the sort of politics).
- Location
- Somewhere wet & hilly in NW England.
Have you missed off a laughy face there?
