"Monty" wrote in message
...
On Tue, 26 Apr 2016 04:17:35 +0100, "Tuesday"
wrote:

Isn't the Imperial system of units a decimal system?

No.

You *could* specify a distance as 3.5 feet or a weight as 5.25 pounds, but
it is more usual either to express things as fractions (5/8 inch *) or else
in a mixture of units (3 feet 6 inches or 5 pounds 4 ounces). So, in normal
usage, the imperial system tends not to be a decimal system.

The other connotation of "decimal" is that units in the same system are
related by powers of ten. They certainly are in the SI/metric system. They
are not in the imperial: various multiples are used (16 ounces/pound, 12
inches/foot, 8 pints/gallon) but I cannot think of any example of two units
which are related by the only sensible ratio - 10 (given that we have 10
digits and so count in base 10).


(*) Analogue scales, such as rulers, tape measures and weighing scales, tend
to be divided into power-of-two divisions of the relevant unit: half,
quarter, eighth, sixteenth and so on as far as the accuracy that you want to
claim in your measurement.