Twelve times table

It is puzzling to me that in the US, that holdout of the Imperial system of measurement, schoolkids learn up to the ten times table only. When I was at school, I learned up to 12, even though the UK had been metric for a decade already. But apparently nobody of my generation in the US learned beyond 10.

As easy as the metric system is to deal with, I have to say that I think a system based on 12 is better than a system based on 10. 12 is an abundant number, but 10 is an accident of biology.

1 comment

  1. Metric UK’s longevity when you were taught 12 X Tables… are you sure it was a decade? Not 12 years? It seems an even bet that 12 X anything is abundant, but the 945 X Table is not taught… and that is consistently abundantly odd. Maybe the metric originator was simply an accident of biology too.

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