this post was submitted on 24 Apr 2026
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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...."
It does. If it were precise to less than that, you'd say 0.62 or 0.6 to indicate hundredths or tenths. Why would you say 0.625 if you're not precise to thousandths? You'd say 0.62500 if you wanted to indicate precision to hundred-thousandths.
But what if your precision is greater than 1/100 but not 10 times as precise?
If you have 0,7 that is more precise than 0,7 and less precise than 0,7. You can just say 0,7 ± 0,02.
That's my point. You essentially need to add a qualifying statement to make decimal work, and even then people don't naturally understand the precision. In your example, most people think the precision is the last bit (.02), whereas it's actually .04 since it represents the error on either side of the measurement.