The single thing imperial measures have going for them in my humble opinion is that the physical size of an inch lends itself well to being easily visualised. Fractional divisions and stupid, arbitrary bases can do one, frankly. Nobody machines stuff in 128ths, do they? No. Because it would be insanely stupid. Half? Quarter? Fine. 13/64? Are you jeffing well serious?!?
The same people who claim the old measurements are "better" are the same people who used to tell me I needed to know long division "because you won't always have a calculator in your pocket". Hold my chuffing beer....
I always get a chuckle out of news reporters when they try to include both metric and Imperial units. For example they will say 70 ft. (21.336 m). To me, 70 ft. means greater than 65 ft and less than 75 ft. Carrying out a conversion to five places is absurd.
Five snorts is a quirt. Seven quirts is a fritz. And on and on. Any measure is relative to what is being done. I was reading a book on Railway Locomotives published 1911. Which indicates the information is from 1910 or earlier. In a section about machining replacement parts, a unit of measure of 1/64th was common. That the 1/64 was "scant" or "full" implies 1/128. That's actually pretty close to 2 tenths of a millimeter.
Today we think in thousandths, why not in tenths of a millimeter. Or we think in tenths of a millimeter. . . The question goes on and probably will for generations into the future. A grain of sand from Florida is considerably different than one from Tahiti, which is different than. . .
Precision math (actually arithmetic) has its' place. If I were building a rocket ship to go to the moon, I might want calculations to five decimal places. But for my home tinkering, two places full or scant is close enough.
Mathematics comes into play when one studies algebra (and trig, on my own) and better. Addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division don't reach that high. And "long division" is something we all do on a regular basis. In the time it takes to reach for a calculator, we have already determined that 1/16 inch equals 0.0625 inch. 1/256 takes a little longer, but why bother with a calculator. A pencil and paper is already handy if needed. And in reality, making a bolt from hex stock deserves a sketch anyway.
I didn't go to high school, barely finished grammar school. But I much prefer long hand pencil and paper for no other reason than batteries don't last forever. And usually die when most needed. I do have a (several) calculaters. To figure the secant of 24.5 degrees does take a bit of calculation. But to bisect that angle, the result is 12.25 degrees. That is basic arithmetic.
End of rant
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