Subject:
            Re: Aprropriate 33 year calendar!
      Date:
            Fri, 11 Oct 1996 07:24:44 -0700
      From:
            Simon Cassidy <simoncas@pacbell.net>
        To:
            CALNDR-L@ECUVM1.BITNET

Daiajo Tibdixious MACS wrote:
>
> Thu, 10 Oct 1996 14:33:57 Simon Cassidy <simoncas@PACBELL.NET>
> >As for 2) I think we ought to take one thing at a time. On the one hand, the
> >more changes in the calendar we package together the harder it will be to
> >reform it at all.
>
> Good point. However, the more changes, the more chance the first ones will be
> done and the latter ones not, as people get sick of it. :(

Yes, but our first problem is not going to be getting concensus on a final
legal proclamation, but IS going to be, getting the go-ahead to start
drafting one (from the powers that can actually get it implemented once its
done).

Thus in terms of getting ANYthing done (for real), we should concentrate on
the items that most justify any action at all, by the powers that be.

Daiajo then puzzled:
>
> I can understand "(year modulo 33) / 8" however I can't understand how your
> procedure works, and I thought I knew maths (although numerical was never my
> strong suit).
>
> >E.G. for 2012 C.E. add 20 to 12 to get 32.
> >E.G. for 1996 C.E. add 19 to 96 to get 115
> >     then repeat and add 1 to 15 to get 16.
> >E.G. for 2016 C.E. add 20 to 16 to get 36
> >     then subtract 33 from 36 to get 3.
> >If it is 4,8,12,16,20,24,28 or 32 then the tested year is a leap-year.
>

Its magic!
No seriously, the layman's Decision Procedure procedure is just
casting out 99s and then casting out one or two 33s at the end.

> How is that better than
>
> 1) divide the year by 33 and find the remainder
> 2)
> >If it is 4,8,12,16,20,24,28 or 32 then the tested year is a leap-year.
> or possibly
> 2) if the remainder modulo 4 is zero then its a leap year.Be careful Daiajo! That would give 9 leap years every 33 years.
>
> There should be a way to combine (1) and (2).

Very few people can do long division (almost none in their heads), and
adding to those that can, the people who use calculators, doesn't really
increase the population percent very much, because of the overlap (i.e.
people who use calculators are not the people who would really need them!).

Daiajo makes the good point that:
> What matters
> is how easy it is to remember.

A little bit of mathemagic is more readily remembered and passed on if
the receiver can easily perform the trick himself, and amaze his friends.

For mathematicians I gave the simplest statement I could in the original
message "Appropriate 33-year calendar!". Did you get this Daiajo? Rick seems
to be confirming that our magic LIST-SERVER, on the calendrical meridian, IS
occasionally misbehaving.

I thus repeat the mathematicians formulation:

February will have 29 days whenever,
the C.E. year-number, reduced modulo 33, is non-zero and divisible by 4.
 

N.B. Our magical LIST-SERVER or some entity in its jurisdiction ended up
making the "Reply To" field of Daiajo's message become his personal email
address (when it got to me) instead of the groups address (in East Carolina).
I have thus had to manually replace the "Mail To" field in this message with
"CALNDR-L@ECUVM1.BITNET" to ensure that our group discussion does not
splinter off into one-on-one private squabbling.
--
Yrs, Simon Cassidy, 1053 47th.St. Emeryville Ca.94608, USA. ph.510-547-0684.