Copyright ©2011 by Paul Niquette All rights reserved. |
|||
athematics will have limited
utility in analyzing dates on the Gregorian
Calendar. Irregular durations for the months may
not be the only impediment to generalized algorithms.
There
is also the matter of leap
year, with its extra day added quadrennially.
No
intervals are divisible by seven except the duration of
February -- hey, in non-leap years. Accordingly,
the days of the week precess
drunkenly through the months.
If we treat four consecutive years as a unit (quad-year, let's call it), then one quad-year comprises 4 x 365 + 1 = 1,461 days, which is not divisible by seven. By putting seven quad-years end-to-end, the resulting 10,227 days is divisible by seven and covers all possible calendars. Seven consecutive quad-years will repeat themselves exactly every 28 years. As a finite domain, the puzzle can be solved by determinism. Your spreadsheet is a handy tool for carrying out an otherwise tedious process, and here are the results -- 28 Magnanimous Months, alongside the number of months in between...
|
Home Page Puzzle Page Recreational Challenges The Puzzle as a Literary Genre