this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2026
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[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 3 points 19 hours ago (16 children)

What I'll defend, however, is fractional measurements when precision matters.

With decimal measurements, precision can't be nearly as granular. If your measurement is precise to one 1/8 of a unit, how do you represent that in decimal? 0.625 implies your measurement is precise to the nearest thousandth, but rounding it to 1 also isn't precise. 5/8, however, tells you the measurement AND the precision.

With fractional measurements, you can specify precision by changing the denominator to any number, whereas decimal is essentially fractional measurements, but with fixed denominator at powers of 10. For instance, a measurements of a half-unit with levels of precision between 0.1 and 0.10, fractional can be 6/12, 7/14, 8/16, 9/18, 10/20, 24/48, etc. Decimal can't specify that precision without essentially writing a sentance.

What's simpler to record? "24/48" or "0.5 +- 0.208333...."

[–] bufalo1973@piefed.social 3 points 17 hours ago* (last edited 17 hours ago)

If you are drawing maps, a precision of meters is enough. If you are building a house, cm it is. If you are making furniture, mm. If you are working with metal, um (micrometer)

[–] rbos@lemmy.ca 4 points 19 hours ago (1 children)

This hurts my brain. Why do we care about all the weird fractions? +/- 0.1 is just another way of saying 1/10. You can still do that if you want without having to do fraction math in random denominators.

[–] ryathal@sh.itjust.works 2 points 16 hours ago (5 children)

The fraction allows you to communicate length and tolerance in a single number. A decimal implies precision to the last number, a measure with a fraction can show 1/8 as more granular than 1/16. 1/8 of a cm is less precise than a mm, but if you wrote 1.125 cm, you are now implying sub mm level precision.

This matters because the level needed in building generally doesn't line up to 1/10 measurements. For example if you had a brick wall and a row had 1 cm height differences between bricks in a row it would be extremely obvious and look terrible. A 1mm height difference would be impossible to notice, but is also overkill to get that level. Ideal is about 5/8 cm or 6.35 mm difference over 3 meters of wall. The fractional measure often ends up easier to work with in practice.

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[–] zaphod@sopuli.xyz 2 points 17 hours ago (1 children)

If I want to build something and I want it to be 23/48" ± 1/24" how would I write that? Because the way I understand it x/48" would imply a tolerance of ± 1/48".

[–] chiliedogg@lemmy.world 1 points 13 hours ago

If your tolerance is 1/24 your precision isn't fine enough enough to record 23/48.

23/48 has a built in tolerance of +/- 1/96, because outside of that range the measurement would read as either 22/48 or 24/48.

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[–] blimthepixie@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 points 20 hours ago (8 children)

mg, g, kg

What are the others meant to represent?

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