JimBowie1958
Old Fogey
- Sep 25, 2011
- 63,590
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I heard of this years ago, but we give the age of a bridge by rounding the partial year to the nearest whole. For example, a bridge that is 8 years and 9 months old would be said to be 9 years old. The same goes for a house or car, or anything of duration that is expected to last for a number of years.
But we dont do this with our ages because we only count complete years due to our use of Birthdays as the increment signifying date. The day before your 25th birthday, you are 24 years old, then 18 hours later you magically age a whole year. What is so magical about a birthday?
But what if we calculated our age the way we would for our house we live in? That would require use of our Mathematical Age Count Increment Day, or MACI Day.
To find your MACI Day, you get the Ordinal Date of your birthday, then add 183 days, and then do a reverse ordinal look up.
So while my birthday is March 6, my MACI Day is September 5th, which is 183 days later. So on that day, my mathematical age rounds up to the next year count.
Not only is this kind of geeky fun to know, but it is an effective way of either getting more birthday celebrations or avoiding them altogether. The extra birthdays is obvious, but to avoid a birthday celebration, one simply objects that you havent had your MACI Day yet, and so you will put off celebrating till that day arrives, then not mention it at all as most people dont know what the hell it is anyway.
But we dont do this with our ages because we only count complete years due to our use of Birthdays as the increment signifying date. The day before your 25th birthday, you are 24 years old, then 18 hours later you magically age a whole year. What is so magical about a birthday?
But what if we calculated our age the way we would for our house we live in? That would require use of our Mathematical Age Count Increment Day, or MACI Day.
To find your MACI Day, you get the Ordinal Date of your birthday, then add 183 days, and then do a reverse ordinal look up.
So while my birthday is March 6, my MACI Day is September 5th, which is 183 days later. So on that day, my mathematical age rounds up to the next year count.
Not only is this kind of geeky fun to know, but it is an effective way of either getting more birthday celebrations or avoiding them altogether. The extra birthdays is obvious, but to avoid a birthday celebration, one simply objects that you havent had your MACI Day yet, and so you will put off celebrating till that day arrives, then not mention it at all as most people dont know what the hell it is anyway.
