Yes, it’s from a book called “Uncle John’s Bathroom Reader” and that book was resting on a closed toilet seat in a nation that only kind of uses the metric system in certain situations… however, you’d be surprised how much you can learn after a single visit to any local fast-food joint!
Everything can be scaled. 1 can be two halves & 3 can be 12 .025’s. or we can all just agree that everything is based on various systems of measurement invented by humans who can hardly agree on their own origins and the purpose of their existence, or even the right to exist.
I don’t think anyone can in good conscience say that inches scale to small measurements. Sure, you can use them, but subtracting 8/1000 out of something that is 1 5/8 and noting the final length is just unwieldy.
You don’t need to get super existential about it, imperial was invented before we invented 0 and the decimal system and it shows. Sure the difference in basic units is irrelevant, no one cares what the meter or inch is defined as, the “superior” one is just what you’re used to and have an intuition for. But having units that relate to each other in round ways and can be easilt rescaled to the precision/range required can be nothing but a benefit
Maybe you’ve never heard of decimal inches. Anything under 1/32" people start using ‘thou’ as in thousandths of an inch.
Subtracting fractions is something you can learn. Children can even do it.
Measurement works because it’s accepted on it’s own terms.
If I were to believe that 1 is 2, it would be very difficult to explain that 2 is indeed double the normal amount of 1.
The same goes for some alien species that has too many or not enough fingers and doesn’t use prime numbers because of this.
I don’t personally believe that math is truly universal. But maybe I’m being existential ;)
Is someone really arguing that prime numbers are a thing because we have 5 fingers?