Happy Pi Day

[Greg Miller]

... for those of you who are trigonometrically inclined.

[Brian Dollemore]

.... And if you are that side of the Pond. This side, it's the fourteenth of March (14.3) rather than March the fourteenth. We still use your version for circles, though.

[Jeff Pulera]

The daughter of my wife's friend just won a school contest for memorizing and reciting Pi to 300 digits. Kids these days...

Jeff

[Greg Miller]

Originally Posted by Brian Dollemore

.... And if you are that side of the Pond. This side, it's the fourteenth of March (14.3) rather than March the fourteenth..

Yeah, I know.

When you think about it, you folks in the old country never get to have Pi day, since there is no 14th month. Which just leaves more Pi for us. (To compensate, you can keep the tea.)

The date format I prefer, because it's most logical (and works best for computer sorting) is 2016.03.14. I know darned well the US will never adopt that, since metric never caught on here. :-(

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Greg Miller

...
The date format I prefer, because it's most logical (and works best for computer sorting) is 2016.03.14. I know darned well the US will never adopt that, since metric never caught on here. :-(

Current applications such as Access or Excel do away with the need for such date gyrations by storing date values as a Julian Date, a decimal number. (Yes, there really is a Star Date!) Upon entry a value that is recognized as a valid date is converted to a number based on the number of elapsed days since an arbitrary Day Zero. As I type, Excel gives me a date value at the moment of 42445.47. It interprets the XX/YY/ZZ entry string as having the date order consistent with the operating system region setting and converts it to a Julian value, the integer portion representing the number of days since Day 1, (for Excel and Access it's January 1, 1900) and the fractional part the elapsed time since the previous midnight. Since it's internally a numerical value rather then a string, as long as your entries are consistent with the OS date format they will sort correctly, irrespective of whether they're MMDDYY, DDMMYY, YYMMDD or even YYDDMM.

[Brian Dollemore]

Thanks for that info, Steve. You learn something new every day, they say!

Being inquisitive, I Googled it - and found that there's actually an online converter at Online Conversion - Julian Date Converter (there would just have to be, I suppose) .... but it gives me today as 2457464.25. I never was any good at maths, though.

[Dave Baker]

I never was any good at maths, though.

And I thought I could count on you Brian :-D

Dave

[Brian Dollemore]

Originally Posted by Dave Baker

And I thought I could count on you Brian :-D

Dave

Sure that wasn't sum other fella, Dave? :-/

[Steve House]

Originally Posted by Brian Dollemore

Thanks for that info, Steve. You learn something new every day, they say!

Being inquisitive, I Googled it - and found that there's actually an online converter at Online Conversion - Julian Date Converter (there would just have to be, I suppose) .... but it gives me today as 2457464.25. I never was any good at maths, though.

Excel uses Julian Date representation but not the true Julian Date. For the real Julian Date used by astronomers. Day One starts at 12 noon, January 1, 4713 BCE

[Richard Crowley]

I develop apps, web pages, and databases for a large, high-tech, international corporation.
In order to avoid all the different date format ambiguities, I made my own non-ambiguous format.
Today is 18-Mar-2016 At least that works around the planet wherever English is perceived.

[Greg Miller]

Originally Posted by Richard Crowley

I made my own non-ambiguous format. Today is 18-Mar-2016

I've seen that used frequently.

Another option I've seen (rarely) is "19-III-2016" with a roman numeral used to designate the month. But at the beginning of a month, "3-IV-2016" would still be ambiguous if you didn't know the "standard."

At least Richard's style is unambiguous, even for a non-English speaker, because the 31 days don't have 31 unique names.

Personally, I think we should have 13 months of 28 days each, and one extra day in the new month (whatever it is). And we'd still need leap years. While we're at it, move Saturday and Sunday to the 6th and 7th day of the week (the way they are now on Russian calendars).

[Jim Andrada]

Or we could use a system like Japan where the official year is 平成二十八年 or the 28th year of the Heisei era. And it will start counting from 1 again when the next emperor assumes the throne and chooses a name for the era. So they get to re-issue the coins and change the freshness dates, etc.