I wonder why algebraic notation?

descriptive notation is a confusing every square has 2 names abomination. that's why

I miss the days of R(R1)-QB1. Rac1 is so European looking.

Not really. That notation wrecks my brain. Dyslexia makes English Descriptive a kind of torture in hell.

Dyslexics have more nuf!

Sho nuf!

Joke and not a joke.

They ripped off Battleship.

Rand McNally maps are algebraic.

It already exists in Chinese Chess. I call it "dead reckoning". And it is the worst system.

Knight moves forward 2 squares and left 1 square.

N↑2←1

Elephant moves diagonally right (2 squares).

象↗

It was a conspiracy by Sesame Street. It was Big Bird and The Count's idea.

Metric is a bad idea.

Everything is based on water.

When you say you weigh so many kilograms, you are actually saying, I weight so and so many drops of water (which we are made of water, but that that makes no sense.)

You would counter-balance your body-weight with stones.

In metric, distance is measured as a fraction of the Earth's circumference.

And weight is based on water. (so is temperature).

When you say you weigh so many kilograms you are saying.

Take the circumference of the earth. Divide into so many fractions.

Take a distance of that fraction of the circumference of the Earth. Make a cube container. Fill it with water.

And that's how much I weigh.

It is ridiculous.

Edit.

I am still impressed by Metric. It is very "Star Trek". An alien from another planet would communicate in that way.

The French are very cerebral. Very "Star Trek". Very ahead of its time.

The first hand held electronic calculator came around in the 1970s. Texas Instruments come to mind, with hot Light Emitting Diodes.

It was the birth of computers.

And teachers got lazy. They give multiple choice tests that can be checked by a Scantron machine.

We tried pinning it on the count but nothing added up!

And the bird wouldn't talk.

I’ve played blindfold with both. Algebraic is far easier.

Descriptive Notation is more error prone.

Was that King side pieces or Queen side pieces?

And is it going to the Queen side or the King side?

And the notation is essentially putting the chess set on a Lazy Susan and turn it around for every move.

Algebraic is logical. It is being adopted in Go.

Look at the picture in a new tab and magnify. You can still see A-T and 1-19.

If I didn't know anything (scary thought), I would invent a Cartesian system (which is Correspondence).

I would invent something from what I know.

But having letters on the X axis and numbers on the Y axis differentiate them and make them less error prone.

Algebraic is quite genius yet quite elementary. You can almost say it is as easy as . . .

this is an unusually debated topic

can someone explain to me why this matters so much to so many people

Communication is of vital importance.

You must have a universal method that everyone can get on board.

You don't want VHS and Betamax.

Get on board!

I was inside FAA HQ when they decided to switch from Degrees to Radians, now that we have computers.

The default in Excel is Radians for trigonometric functions.

For calculators, Degrees.

I was in a hospital and the thermometers were in Celsius.

Celsius, what a dumb idea.

Fahrenheit himself set the human body temperature at 100° F. It's 98.6° F (He didn't have modern precision).

Celsius is based on boiling and freezing of water.

Water freezes at 0° C. But you can put salt on the road to lower its freezing temperature. But there is a point where no matter how much salt you put on the road, snow will still freezes anyway. That is 0° F and you will slip and fall on your driveway even if you put salt on it.

Fahrenheit is built around the temperature in our range of understanding.

How much is 100° C? Let me see. Let get get a pot, get some water, invent fire, gather wood, and boil up the water.

How much is 100° F? I am 100° F.

It seems like the rebirth of the Waffles v. Pancakes threads of the past. They were epic!

Of course, waffles.