by Steven Flintham (15A) Introduction It's possible some of you used to
watch "Jim'll Fix It" back in the
mid-80s; if you didn't, this
introduction won't be much use, but
try to stay with me. ;-)
One of the few things I can remember
from it was a fairly old (at least by
the standards of the usual 'guests')
man who wanted to take part in a fake
'Mastermind' game working out the day
of the week. He was given dates like
'09/03/1982' and he'd say 'Tuesday'
almost immediately - and he was always
right, if I remember correctly. They
had a little computer display in the
corner of the screen (which, for what
it's worth, looked very much like it
was part of a BBC mode 7 screen),
showing the correct answers for our
benefit.
I was quite impressed by this at the
time, and thought he must have some
sort of gift. (Albeit a not incredibly
useful one. ;-) ) Maybe he did, and I
suspect he must have had at least a
reasonable ability at mental
arithmetic and/or a good memory. But
it turns out that there's an easy way
of doing it, whether or not he was
doing it like that himself, and I was
really impressed with it when I found
out about it. (There are probably
several other roughly similar methods.)
"What's this got to do with the BBC?",
you ask. Well, this article explains
how to do it, and there's an
accompanying program to do worked
examples for you if you need them, and
to help you test yourself.
References I found out about this method from the
sci.astro FAQ, revision 2.10, part 3.
I've sent a copy of it to CJR along
with this article so you can read it
for yourself if you wish. The FAQ says
that the method was originally from
volume two of a book written by John
Horton Conway with Guy and Berlekamp
called 'Winning Ways'.
The basic idea You might find it helpful to have a
calendar and/or diary to hand while
following this, although it's by no
means necessary.
The first thing to note is that,
although the question 'What day of the
week was June 7th 1996?' is hard to
answer (unless you know a method to do
it), the question 'What day of the
week was June 7th, given that June
19th was a Wednesday?' is much easier.
All you have to do is count through
the days - the 19th was a Wednesday,
so the 18th was a Tuesday, and so on.
Admittedly this is slow, but you can
do a sort of 'date arithmetic' for
dates within the same month; you'll
probably be able to work something out
for yourself, but if you can't or
don't want to, I'll outline some ways
of doing it later.
So, in order to answer questions like
'What day of the week was June 7th
1996?', what you really need is a way
of finding out what day of the week
some day in June 1996 was.
The key idea is that, in any non-leap
year, the following dates all fall on
the same day of the week (called the
'Doomsday'): January 3rd, February
0th, March 0th, April 4th, May 9th,
June 6th, July 11th, August 8th,
September 5th, October 10th, November
7th and December 12th.
Yes, I know there's no such date as
'February 0th' - but it's a convenient
shorthand for 'the last day of the
January'. Why not just say 'January
31st'? Well, without this there isn't
a day in February and March which you
know falls on a particular day of the
week, which would be a bit awkward.
Perhaps more importantly, it helps to
simplify handling leap years, because
the last day of February is always
March 0th, whereas it can be either
February 28th or February 29th in
conventional terms.
You need to remember those dates, but
it's not as hard as it looks. You do
have to remember January 3rd, February
0th and March 0th separately, but look
at the rest of the list written out in
numerical form as day/month: 4/4, 9/5,
6/6, 11/7, 8/8, 5/9, 10/10, 7/11 and
12/12. All the even-numbered months
are simple, which just leaves 9/5,
5/9, 11/7 and 7/11. They come in
pairs, so you really only need to
remember 9/5 and 7/11. And there's a
simple mnemonic for remembering these:
"I went to my 9-to-5 job at the 7-11."
(According to the sci.astro FAQ,
'"Seven-Eleven" is the name of a
ubiquitous chain of convenience
stores.')
How do you know what the Doomsday is
for the year you're interested in?
There's a way of working it out, which
I'll describe below, but if you only
want to do the calculation for one or
two years (such as the current year),
it's probably easiest to look it up on
a calendar and just memorise it. (This
is what I do at the moment.) To save
you looking it up for yourself, the
Doomsday for 1998 is Saturday.
The final complication, if you already
know the Doomsday for the year, is
that in leap years the January 3rd and
February 0th don't fall on the
Doomsday; you need to use January 4th
and February 1st instead.
Date arithmetic
So, now you have one date in every
month which you know falls on the
Doomsday, and you know what the
Doomsday is. Suppose you want to know
what day of the week June 20th 1998
is. You know, from the above, that
June 6th 1998 is a Saturday.
20-6=14=2*7, and since the days of the
week repeat on a seven day cycle, June
20th is also a Saturday.
What about December 23rd 1998? You
know that December 12th 1998 is a
Saturday. 23-12=11=7+4. You can ignore
the 7, because that takes you from a
Saturday back to a Saturday, so the
23rd is the day of the week four days
after a Saturday. Which day of the
week this is might be obvious to you,
but I prefer to number the days
(Sunday = 0, Monday = 1, ...) and say
Saturday + 4 is 6+4=10=7+3, and
discarding the 7 gives 3, which is
Wednesday.
(In case it's not obvious, you can
start the numbering on any day you
want, so if Wednesday = 0 seems more
natural to you then go ahead. You can
also number starting from 1 if you
want.)
By 'ignoring 7s', what you're really
doing (of course) is taking the
remainder on dividing by 7. So, in the
previous example, you can also think
of it as 23-12=11 and 11 remainder 7
is 4, then carry on as before.
Both of those examples
'coincidentally' had the date in
question after the 'special' day. What
about September 3rd 1998? You know
September 5th is a Saturday. Because
the special day is always near the
start of the month, you can just count
the days backwards from the special
day if you wish. Alternatively,
because of the seven day cycle,
September 10th falls on the same day
of the week as September 3rd, so you
can just work with September 10th.
10-5=5, so September 10th (and hence
September 3rd) falls on Saturday + 5,
i.e. a Thursday.
Finally, an example using a special
day which is a '0th', just to show it
makes no difference. What day of the
week is March 9th 1998? March 0th is a
Saturday, from above. 9-0=9=7+2, so
March 9th is Saturday + 2 = Monday.
This might look a bit complicated, but
it isn't really. The clever bit is the
way you have a special day in each
month which falls on a known day of
the week (the Doomsday). Using that to
work out what day of the week another
day in the same month falls on isn't
difficult, but if you want to do it
quickly in your head you'll probably
need to spend a little bit of time
working out your own system for doing
it. The above is roughly how I do it
myself, so it suits me quite well, but
other people might prefer different
methods.
Arithmetic modulo 7
For anyone who's interested, I'll
describe briefly exactly how I do the
calculation. I use arithmetic modulo 7
- that is, arithmetic where you only
'really' have the numbers 0-6. All the
other numbers are just alternative
names for one of these numbers - in
fact, the number which they differ
from by a multiple of 7.
So 20 is another name for (the
technical phrase is 'congruent to') 6,
because 20-2*7=6, and 983 is another
name for 3, because 983-140*7=3.
Negative numbers are allowed as well;
-19 is another name for 2 because
-19+3*7=2.
Because of this, it's correct
(more-or-less) to write things like
20=6, 983=3 and -19=2. In effect, you
can add or subtract 7, or any multiple
of it, at any point.
That's just the background, but
working modulo 7 the calculations
become even simpler. What day of the
week is December 23rd 1998? December
12th 1998 is a Saturday (day 6). So
the 23rd is 23-12+6=11+6=17=3, i.e. a
Wednesday.
The nice thing (as far as I'm
concerned) is that there's no longer
anything at all special about days
which fall before the special day.
What day of the week is December 3rd
1998? December 12th is a Saturday (day
6). So the 3rd is 3-12+6=-3=4, i.e. a
Thursday.
In date calculations like these,
working modulo 7 is really just a
version of the 'use September 10th
instead of September 3rd, because
they're the same day' trick mentioned
above. I just find it a nice easy way
to think about it, because the 'adding
7s' is done in the arithmetic rather
than as an extra 'ah, September 3rd is
before the special day, so I need to
add 7'-type step beforehand. I just
say to myself '3-5+6' and then it's
all simply arithmetic modulo 7.
Working out the Doomsday
If you've got real ambition, or if you
want to work with a year for which
it's not convenient to check on a
calendar, the last thing to master is
working out the Doomsday for a given
year. I can't do this in my head yet,
but sooner or later I intend to try
and master it.
For any 19xx year, work out xx/12,
giving a quotient Q and remainder R.
Then divide R by 4, giving a quotient
Q2. (You don't need the remainder for
this second division). The Doomsday is
then Wednesday + Q + R + Q2.
So, for 1998: 98/12=8 remainder 2,
i.e. Q=8, R=2. R divided by 4 is 0
remainder 2, so Q2=0. Wednesday + Q +
R + Q2 = Wednesday + 8 + 2 = Wednesday
+ 10 = Saturday, as I said above.
The last complication is that
Wednesday has be replaced by Tuesday
for 16xx and 20xx years, Sunday for
17xx and 21xx years and Friday for
18xx and 22xx years. Wednesday works
for 15xx and 23xx years. The cycle
repeats over a four century period, so
(for example) use Tuesday for 24xx
dates.
The program
The program is fairly simple and
should be easy to use. It will work
through the calculations for any date
in the years 1900-2099 inclusive, and
also give you a ten question test on
years of your choice within this range.
Any comments on either the program or
this article are welcome.