Happy New Year!
With a new calendar year, you deserve a couple of new calendar feats to go with it. In this post, you'll learn how to quickly give the day of the week AND the moon phase for any date in 2014.
Even better, both of these feats are much easier than they sound!
DAY OF THE WEEK FOR ANY DATE IN 2014: The method to do this is quite simple, and is known as the Doomsday method, originally developed by John Horton Conway. Don't worry, learning this method for one particular year is very simple.
The "Doomsday" from which the method gets its name always refers to the last day of February, whether it's the 28th or 29th. For 2014, the "Doomsday" is Friday (Feb. 28th, since it's not a leap year). If you think about it, you can already work out any date in February using just this knowledge.
For example, Valentine's Day, Feb. 14th, must also be a Friday, because it's exactly 2 weeks before Feb. 28th. How about Feb. 2nd (Groundhog Day)? Well, Feb. 7th is a Friday, and Feb. 2nd is 5 days before that. What's 5 days before a Friday? The answer is Sunday! Therefore, Groundhog Day will be on Sunday in 2014.
It's also fairly simple to learn the even-numbered months. There's a very simple pattern to remember them: 4/4 (April 4th), 6/6 (June 6th), 8/8 (August 8th), 10/10 (October 10th), and 12/12 (December 12th) will always fall on the same day of the week as the "Doomsday" (the last day of February, remember?).
On which day will Christmas fall in 2014? We know December 12th is a Friday, so 2 weeks later, December 26th, is also a Friday. Since Christmas is one day before that, it must be on a Thursday this year!
The odd months aren't much harder, but the patter is not the same. 5/9 (May 9th) and 9/5 (September 5th) will also always fall on the Doomsday, as will 7/11 (July 11th) and 11/7 (November 7th). This is easy to remember with the following simple mnemonic: "I'm working 9 to 5 at the 7-11". It helps you remember that 9 and 5 always go together, as do 7 and 11.
When is July 4th this year? It's exactly 1 week before July 11th, so it must be a Friday, as well. If you've got all the previous dates down, you've already got the mental capability to determine the date for 10 out of the 12 months!
The easiest way to handle March is to think of Feb. 28th as also being "March 0th". Working forward from March 0th, it's easy to see that March 7th, 14th, 21st and 28th will all be Fridays. St. Patrick's Day, March 17th, is 3 days after March 14th, so it's 3 days after a Friday, making it a Monday in 2014.
In January, it's usually the 3rd day of the month that falls on the Doomsday. In a leap year, however, January 4th falls on the Doomsday. Remember it this way: "3 times out of 4, it's January 3rd. On the 4th year, it's January 4th." In 2014, since it's not a leap year, you only have to recall that January 3rd is on the Doomsday (Friday, for 2014).
January 15th is Martin Luther King, Jr.'s birthday, but what day does it fall on in 2014? January 3rd is a Friday this year, and so is January 17th (2 weeks later). Take back 2 days, and we get January 15th being a Wednesday this year!
With the above knowledge, and a little practice, you can quickly and easily determine the day of the week for any 2014 date. You could get practice at the Day For Any Date (Mentalist Challenge) page, changing the year to 2014, and then trying to determine the date before you click the Show button.
When you're demonstrating this ability for someone, it's nice to be able to prove that you're right about the date. I use QuickCal on my iPod Touch (similar calendar are available for many portable devices).
MOON PHASE FOR ANY DATE IN 2014: 1 year ago, I posted a new tutorial about determining the moon phase for any date. Similar to the year calculations, focusing on a particular year like 2014 greatly simplifies the required calculations. Like the doomsday algorithm above, this formula was also developed by John Conway.
In fact, working out the moon phase for any date in 2014 is even simpler than working out the date! How simple is it?
(Month key number + date - 3) mod 30
It's probably best if I explain each part:
Month key number: January's key number is 3, February's key number is 4, and all other months' keys are their traditional numbers; March is 3, April is 4, May is 5, and so on up to December, which is 12.
Date: This is simply the number represented by the particular date in the month. For the 1st, add 1. For the 2nd, add 2. For the 3rd, add 3, and so on.
- 3: The subtracting of 3 takes the starting point of 2014 into account, which is why this particular formula works ONLY for 2014.
mod 30: If you get a total of 30 or more, simply subtract 30. Otherwise, just leave the number as is. Betterexplained.com has an intuitive explanation of modular arithmetic.
The resulting number will be the approximate age of the moon in days, from 0 to 29. This formula only gives an approximation, so there's a margin of error of ±1 day.
As an example, let's figure the phase of the moon on July 4, 2014. July is the 7th month, and the 4th is the date, so we work out (7 + 4 - 3) mod 30 = (11 - 3) mod 30 = 8 mod 30, which is just 8.
In that example, we estimate the age of the moon to be 8 days old.
What exactly does the age of the moon in days mean in practical terms? Here's a quick guide:
- 0 days = New moon (the moon is as dark as it's going to get)
- 0 to 7.5 days = Waxing crescent (Less than half th moon is lit, and it's getting brighter each night)
- 7.5 days = 1st quarter moon (Half the moon is lit, and gets brighter each night)
- 7.5 to 15 days = Waxing gibbous (More than half the moon is lit, and getting brighter each night)
- 15 days = Full moon (The moon is as bright as it's going to get, and will start getting darker each night)
- 15 to 22.5 days = Waning gibbous (More than half the moon is lit, and it's getting darker each night)
- 22.5 days = 3rd quarter moon (Half the moon is lit, and gets darker each night)
- 22.5 to 29 days = Waning crescent (Less than half the moon is lit, and it's getting darker each night)
So, our 8 day old moon from our example, with a plus or minus 1-day margin of error taken into account, means that the moon could actually be 7-9 days old, so it will likely appear as close to half lit, and getting brighter each night. You can even verify this with Wolfram Alpha.
If you have any experiences or thoughts you'd like to share about memorizing the dates and moon phases for the 2014 calendar, I'd love to hear about them in the comments below!
One of my major pet peeves, as many Grey Matters know, is the portrayal of memory and understanding as opposite ways to learn, instead of simply two approaches that can aid each other.
Obviously, I'm a big fan of mixing math and fun. It's time to give a little credit to one group that's responsible.
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