Quote:

Before laughing too much at the mote that used to be in someone else's eye, we should consider the some of the logs in our own, e.g.

3 teaspoons in a tablespoon
2 tablespoons in an ounce
8 ounces in a cup
2 pints in a quart
4 quarts in a gallon



I think that presenting the measuring system that way you're obscuring some sense of order that is really there. Look at it this way:

For liquid measurement:
16 tablespoons to a cup
16 cups to a gallon

A quart, being a quarter gallon, is naturally 4 cups.
A pint, being an eighth of a gallon, is 2 cups.
A firkin (honest!), being 9 gallons, at first appears to be a strange unit, but 9 gallons is equal to 144 cups.

As for tablespoons and ounces:
2 tablespoons to an ounce = 2^1 tablespoons
8 ounces to a cup = 16 tablespoons = 2^4 tablespoons
16 ounces to a pint = 32 tablespoons = 2^5 tablespoons
32 ounces to a quart = 64 tablespoons = 2^6 tablespoons
128 ounces to a gallon = 256 tablespoons = 2^8 tablespoons

Traditional dry measurement units also have an orderly progression:
1 quart = 2 pints = 2^1 pints
1 gallon = 8 pints = 2^3 pints
1 peck = 16 pints = 2^4 pints
1 bushel = 64 pints = 2^6 pints