I originally posted the Day of the Week For Any Date tutorial back in 1998. Over the years, I've learned a few tips and tricks to improve both the method itself and the teaching.

As a result, I decided to develop a completely new and revised Day of the Week For Any Date tutorial! What's new about it?

The first major change I made was to eliminate the requirement of having to study and practice other memory systems first. Mnemonics are still used, but they're simpler, shorter, and don't require previous knowledge of any memory techniques.

The lessons are also done gradually, so that you can learn at your own pace. After introducing the approach and teaching weekday and month codes, you immediately start working with the years 2000-2003 to get the basic idea of the formula down.

That immediate application of the formula necessitated two changes of it's own. First, I've started using the 21st century (2000-2099) as the basic century. The original tutorial used the 20th century (1900-1999) as the basic century.

Second, instead of teaching about leap years at the end of the tutorial, they're now an integral part of learning how to do this feat. When learning about the formula, you quickly learn how to handle leap years for dealing with January and February dates in 2000. The very next step is learning mnemonics for the first 7 leap years, and then how to handle the remaining leap years without any more mnemonics!

Once you have all the leap years down, the remaining years are easily learned, too. Handling other centuries can be picked up quickly, as well.

Of course, none of these steps are effective unless you practice them. All this re-working of the method naturally required a completely new quiz. Seeing the quiz buttons, you quickly get a feel for the pace of the lessons: Learn and practice codes, then learn and practice dates with them, move on to the next set of codes, and repeat.

It may seem slower, but the more gradual nature of the new tutorial should make it easier to learn and less intimidating.

Have you tried to learn this feat before? Do you like this version of the tutorial? I'd love to hear your comments and criticisms in the comments!