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DIY Basics: How to Quickly Determine the Midpoint, Fraction-Free

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I hate the imperial measurement system, and can confidently say that anyone who doesn't recognize the superiority of metric is a freaking idiot. How nice it must be for you Aussies, Germans and Koreans to drill an 8mm hole, realize you need it a smidgen bigger, and yell down the ladder for a 9mm bit. Versus us Yankees drilling a 7/32 hole, then having to do an equation in your head to calculate if you need a 3/16 or a 1/4.

For the non-mathematically-gifted like me, dividing things with fractions is the worst. For example, when doing DIY projects you often have to calculate the midpoint of a particular piece—whether it's wood, fabric or metal—and I'd be constantly scrawling equations onto the piece of wood I was working and having to sand the marks off afterwards. That is, until I learned this simple tip to easily find the exact midpoint without having to divide fractions.

Let's say I want to find the midpoint of the board above. We take a tape measure to it...

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...and see it's 17-something. That's all you're looking for, ignore the finer gradations.

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Then we take note of the nearest even number, whether higher or lower than the actual measurement. In this case the nearest even number is 18.

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