"All that was ever suggested was that the dumbing down of education *coincided* with the drive to decimalise. It's never been claimed that introducing metric teaching 'started' dumbing down."

The first sentence strongly suggests a link between the two unless it is qualified by reference to other possible factors.

It too is typical of a politicians ploy. It is designed to provoke a defensive argument that can easily be shot down.

However my motives for raising this issue was not to engage in argument about who said what and why but to examine the issue of decimal versus fractions which seems to occupy many who post here.

It has been argued quite clearly that fractions are better than decimal and that the drive toward decimal has produced a culture of 'calculator junkies'. All this of course is designed to discredit decimal systems of measurement.

Whether people think more easily in fractions rather than decimal or percentages depends very much on the application.

Comparing gradients of 1 in 4, 1 in 12, 1 in 6 in the form 25%, 8.3%, 16.7% does make it more obvious which is steeper than which because the percentage figure gets larger the steeper the hill. The opposite is true with ratios.

Cutting a cake to divide it among so many people is an obvious application of fractions rather than decimal. No one tries to gauge 16.7% of a cake.

I would argue in general though that decimal is more convenient than fractions for the purpose of measurement.

There are nevertheless areas of mathemactics where fractions are essential.

The message at the beginning of this thread was an accident caused by Network54 time-outs.

It was intended as a response to Tony on the decimal v fractions thread.