How am I supposed to know certain tasks for math?

So I have 24 hours game time, which equals 6 min real life time. So 24x6=144. 144÷60. Wait, how do I know to do that? Like what tells me to divide 144 by 60?

Like I want to know the explanation of why 144 gets divided by 60, and what defines that? Did ancient Greeks figure that out? How was it invented? There's all this math and equations and algebra, and calculus, where'd it all come from and why is it so necessary??

This page is a permanent link to the reply below and its nested replies. See all post replies »

NerdyPotato · M

I have no idea why you'd multiply 24 by 6 or divide that by 60. What were you trying to calculate?

twiigss · M

@NerdyPotato So in this game I play, it takes 6 real life minutes to equal 1 in game hour. We were trying to calculate how many real life minutes it would take to run this mission. It takes 24 in game hours. If each in game hour equals 6 real life minutes, you take 24 and multiply by 6. Your answer would then be 144 real life minutes. Because there are 60 minutes in an hour, you take 144 and divide by 60. And that gives you an answer of 2.4 which is 2.4 hours. Which is a bit less than 2 and a half hours. How many minutes is .4 of an hour? Half an hour is .5

My whole thing is, who comes up with this stuff?

NerdyPotato · M

@twiigss ah, that makes sense then. But yeah, calculations with time are complicated. And it gets worse when dealing with dates: then you've got to worry about different lengths of months, leap years, etc.

twiigss · M

@NerdyPotato Exactly. And who created all that? For example, if I have 5 minutes and multiply by 32 that gives me 160.

Now let's assume I know nothing about math or calculations, how am I supposed to know to divide that 160 by 60? Is it something I learn from people who have learned and so on? Who created that calculation, why is it a thing?

I ask these questions because I get so damn frustrated when people know this stuff and I don't, and I never remember being taught this stuff either.

I was in special math classes most of high school so I don't think they went that far in teaching math.

NerdyPotato · M

@twiigss to go from minutes to hours, you divide it by the number of minutes per hour. That's a common concept, and the same to go from feet to yards or milliliters to liters. But why are there 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in a day? No clue... Those seem like strange choices for sure.

tenente · 100+, M

@twiigss @NerdyPotato engineer here. sumerians developed base 60 (and base 12) used for timekeeping and geometry. it's better than alternatives and ingrained in our daily lives so we just keep using it

tenente · 100+, M

@NerdyPotato

But why are there 60 minutes in an hour and 24 hours in a day?

not to bore you: base 60 has many divisors even using prime factors making it easy to divide hours into quarters, halves, etc without resorting to decimals.

above there's conflict with base 10 and that's expected (what's .4 of an hour?) base 10 has far less divisors and only 2 prime factors, very theoretical, and not adaptable for our real world needs