Jul 31, 2011

Unique days

Recently I read that July 22 (22/7) and March 14 (3.14, American-style of writing a day) are 'pi-lovers' day. Interesting! As a sequel to my recent post on days and mathematical rarities,and the old one on numbing numbers, some other unique days:
October 1 & January 10: (01.10 & 10.01) Shortest palindrome.
December 21: (21.12 or 12.21). Only non-zero palindrome
July 24: 24/7. Workaholics' day
01:12:35 AM on 8/13/21 (Aug 13, 2021, again American-style) For Fibonacci fans.
01/12: (Either Dec 1 or Jan 12), an off-shoot of the date above.
Aug 24: Can also be written as Au 24 (not A 24, as April also starts with 'A'). Day for 'ultra-pure' (like unadulterated gold) people. [Au is the symbol for Gold]

If you find any other day uniquely interesting (not like september 2011, the whole month being 9/11), pl do comment.

Jul 29, 2011

Meet Flexy Stu


whose name deserved to be floating on the water (I call it "தண்ணீரில் ஓர் கவிதை" - thaNNeeril Or kavithai). Flexy Stu is the choreographer of VTV's songs. The salient part of his dance movements was that, it was stylish and simple (or looked simple, thanks to the dancers) while appearing new for Tamil cinema. Especially for Hosanna and Omana Penney, it was simply brilliant! Hats off to you, Stu !! Wish to see more of your contribution in Tamil movies.

Jul 15, 2011

Rare months? NOT!

(Pic Courtesy: walyou.com)
From being amusing and funny, it has gone down to downright irritating to read and receive via e-mail and SMS, news that a particular month is rarely unique. An example is this month itself - July 2011 having an once-in-823-years-occurrence of 5 each Fri, Sat & Sundays. How more absurd can it get? A little application of school maths would have prevented the gossip mongers from making a fool of themselves.

There are 7 months in a year that have 31 days. After subtracting 4x7=28 days, u get 3 days which get repeated for the 5th time. Now, for any combination of Fri, Sat & Sun or Sat, Sun & Mon, the first day in the sequence also has to be the first day of the month. The probability that any of the 7 days of the week is the first day of any month is 1/7. Usually, one particular date on the next year falls on the next day. That is bcos, every 'normal' year has 365 days, which is 52 weeks PLUS one day. Some of you would have noticed that if your birthday was on Sat this year, it would be on Sun the next year, if there is no 'Feb 29' in between. In that case, it is 52 weeks + 2 days.

So, for any particular month, one can say that, usually once in 7 years, most of the Sun-Sat w'd be the first days of the month. But not all days, because of the leap year problem. Whenever that month appears for the first time after any Feb 29, the days get pushed by 2. In any case, here are the facts: Of the 7 months having 31 days, only 2 will have the same day pattern from 1st to 31st: Jan & Oct in a normal year, and Jan & July in a leap year. It means that there are 6 different patterns out of the possible 7. It also implies that, the occurrences of 3 Fri, Sat & Sun or Sat, Sun & Mon are very common. Also, leap year or not, every one of these 7 months w'd have gone through a particular Sun-Sat pattern atleast once in a decade.

On the other hand, 11th of Nov this year will be a unique occurrence, which happens once in 100 years. 11-11-11 wont be possible until 2111.