Tuesday, August 5, 2008

Mastering Dates

It might just be me but for a while I found dates confusing. Without a calendar I was lost, I still am, but I have resolved to do something about it. Thus I blog and hopefully ingrain it in my brain and maybe share some useful tools to others wonder about the topic. The thing I find most useful is the day of the week calculation. I find myself wondering "How do I calculate the day of the week? 18 days out, 19, 43???" So here is my attempt at overcoming it. Something they never taught us in school eh?

Regarding Months.
Any odd month before and including July has 31 Days, after that it is every even month including August. February is the outcast with 28 or 29 days depending on the leap year.

Regarding Weeks.
The easiest way I have found to Master the day of the week problem is making sure you know the days a month has. Then imagine the week as a 0 based enumeration (Sunday is 0 add 1 for each day up to Saturday 6.)

Todays Date is Tuesday, August 5, 2008
  1. Take the current day, Tuesday, which would be 2.
  2. Keeping in mind the month's number of days choose the day you need out there. Sept 7th.
  3. 31 - 5 means 26 days left in August, Plus the 7 days into September = 33.
  4. Now add 33 + 2 (current day of the week) = 35. Now divide 35 by 7 = 0. Which would be Sunday. The remainder is the day of the week from the enumeration, Sunday is 0.
This should work decently for any number and for the most part you can do this in your head. It was way easier than trying to count out the week especially far out.

Here is the enumeration in case its confusing:
  • 0 - Sunday
  • 1 - Monday
  • 2 - Tuesday
  • 3 - Wednesday
  • 4 - Thursday
  • 5- Friday
  • 6 - Saturday
If you memorize the ends and middle its easy to know the others.

I know this is random, but I just found it interesting.