Posted on 12/31/2009 2:36:00 PM PST by La Enchiladita
As we approach the end of the year 2009, we are seeing a repeat of the innumeracy that was so prevalent as we came to the end of 1999.
To wit, the first of January 2010 is not the first day of a new decade, but the first day of the last year of the first decade of the 21st century, which began Jan. 1, 2001.
Ours is a decimal system, based on the numbers 1 through 10, and when you count things – be they apples, fingers, cars or years – you begin with 1.
This is because if you don’t have at least one, you have nothing to count. Calling 2009 the end of the decade is akin to telling a child to count his fingers as follows, 0, 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, and telling him: “You have 10 fingers.”
As final emphasis, in our decimal system any number ending in zero is the final number in a group of 10. A number ending in two zeroes is the final number in a group of a hundred, whilst three zeroes is the last in a group of a thousand, etc.
Why is this hard for otherwise intelligent people to grasp?
Oh, and in passing, saying that “most people think this is the end of the decade” is of no import whatsoever. Numbers, arithmetic, mathematics is not subject to “what people think.”
Okay, I get it, but by this logic you would also say that a 20-year-old is in his teens or a 50-year-old is in his forties. Base-10 system and all, we just don’t do it. IMO, this is a case where the intuitive, practical understanding of the general public has got to trump the esoteric mathematical correctness of a few ultra-literal snobs.
I also say it will be “twenty-ten” not “two-thousand and ten” ... as in “nineteen-ten” not “one-thousand nine hundred and ten” the way the media morons would say it ...
>> The year 1 A.D. ended one year after the birth of Christ.
When did it begin?
Wrong. There was no year "0".
Oh gosh, I am so busted:^)
See #44.
Aha. So now we know why the dreaded Y2K collapse never happened when 2000 AD started!
You mean the First State Bank of Bethlehem didn't have a year "0" calendar?
>> Wrong. There was no year “0”.
Then what year preceded 1 AD, 1 BC? What followed 1 BC?
Yeah, let’s get on to more important things — like is it “two thousand and ten” or “twenty-ten”? Or, will there REALLY be a “blue moon” tonight....
Anyway, Happy New Year to everyone!
IMHO, the eighties didn’t start until Jan 20, 1981. That was when the last of the rubbish from the 1970s was swept to the curb and dumped back in Georgia.
I am in total agreement as to decimal numbers, I still have a hard time with AM starting at 12 then running 1 through 11...
Regards,
GtG
And calendars weren’t based on the birth of Christ. The Julian was created 46 years before Christ was born and the Gregorian calendar (invented by Pope Gregory XIII) was created 1582 years after Christ was born.
Bizarre.
So a year pronounced "nineteen eighty" is not part of the eighties, but a year pronounced "nineteen ninety" is?
Y2K was doomed to happen from the moment computer chips were made. No one back then ever thought computers would have been around this long.
1 B.C. went right into 1 A.D. with no year 0 in between.
Only if it's clear out tonight! The next New Years blue moon won't happen until 2029!
That is a problem, isn’t it?
As far as I know, theoretically, the year Christ was born was AD 1 (the year of our Lord 1, or the first year of our Lord).
The year before that was 1 BC.
But since He was probably born between 4 and 6 BC, this whole argument is really very silly (except in the case of the ordinal numbering of centuries, an entirely artificial construct anyway).
>> Our calendar purportedly begins with the birth of Christ in 0 A.D., right?
This is crazy. Of course there’s 0 AD. There’s also -1 AD, and there’s also 3010 AD.
A decade is a period of 10 years. From the zero time AD, the 10 year interval completes 10 years thereafter.
All I want to know is how many days elapsed between zero time AD and what’s considered to be 1 AD. If zero, then the decade intervals are 1, 11, 21, 31... But if 1 year elapsed between time zero AD and 1 AD, then the decade intervals are 0, 10, 20, 30...
Glad to know that the year 2000 was part of the 90’s....
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