Improving our units and notation
Many of the systems and ideas we use every day, like the way we count and measure things, were developed over centuries. They have managed to “stand the test of time”, which is certainly an advantage; but they also suffer a form of “historical inertia”, which can prevent subsequent insights from gaining traction.
For example, we still talk about 90°, 120° and 180° instead of ¼, ⅓ and ½ turns; essentially because the Babylonians didn’t have fractions 5000 years ago. We also have redundant units like the tonne (Megagram) and litre (milli-cubic-metre); we waste time learning tricky, niche concepts (like subtraction and pseudovectors) rather than more elegant, general alternatives (like negatives and rotors, in the cases mentioned).
These pages are my ongoing attempt to find such situations, where we can replace complicated approaches with simpler ones; combine a bunch of ad-hoc choices into some smaller set of consistent rules; and avoid some notions entirely (turning them into niche historical curiosities, rather than foundational curricula taught to every child).
Note that the truly important parts, the underlying ideas, are generally not my own; although their unorthodox presentation will include some originality, e.g. to avoid historical baggage and focus on coherence. Many of these are whole subjects which will not be described in full detail, or with the level of rigour some might desire; this is largely due to my own ignorance, but also to focus on equipping individuals (mostly myself!) with a ‘core’ of good ideas, which can be taken further if desired. I’ll include links to Wikipedia, etc. for those who are curious for more!
Each idea should be mostly stand-alone, although they will be presented in a cohesive way (for example, long-subtraction uses the notation from negatives); I’ll try to cross-link such cases.
Categories
Quick wins lists some ideas which are relatively easy to adopt right now. More specific, in-depth pages are collected below, into rough categories.
Units of Measure
The metric system is far better than the various ‘imperial’ systems, although not for the reasons usually given.
We can make life even simpler by limiting ourselves to the SI subset of metric, although that could also be improved.
Numbers
‘Minus signs’ are ambiguous and should be avoided. Instead, over-bar notation composes better, and facilitates negative digits which let us avoid subtraction.