Leap Years: we can do better

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  • čas přidán 22. 02. 2016
  • 2016 is a leap year because it is a multiple of 4 (and not a multiple of 100). The Gregorian Calendar system of leap years gives an average tropical year of 365.2425 days compared to the current true value of 365.2421891, but I think we can do better.
    Yes, at the 1:20-ish point it should be "365.2421891 days" as is on the screen, not the "365.2521891 years" I say. Sorry, it's been a busy week and I recored and edited the video a bit too quickly to spot Past Matt's mistakes.
    Read Adam Goucher's article here:
    cp4space.wordpress.com/2012/0...
    Music by Howard Carter
    Design by Simon Wright
    MATT PARKER: Stand-up Mathematician
    Website: standupmaths.com/
    Book: makeanddo4D.com/
    Nerdy maths toys: mathsgear.co.uk/
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Komentáře • 2,5K

  • @unvergebeneid
    @unvergebeneid Před 8 lety +2355

    So glad the US were still a colony when that Gregorian Calendar change happened or we'd all have to convert between international dates and US dates.

    • @standupmaths
      @standupmaths  Před 8 lety +1071

      This is almost too true to be funny.

    • @DanDart
      @DanDart Před 8 lety +40

      +Penny Lane They *sometimes* listen to standards. Not often I'll admit.

    • @DanDart
      @DanDart Před 8 lety +7

      +Leonardo Cisija that's what I meant by "not often" yeah :p

    • @unvergebeneid
      @unvergebeneid Před 8 lety +22

      Dan Dart Huh ... I'm not saying you're wrong but I really have a hard time thinking of an example. I mean in an area where the general public is concerned, not some obscure and purely technical ISO standard. UTF-8 maybe but that's compatible with ASCII so I don't think it really counts.

    • @DanDart
      @DanDart Před 8 lety +16

      +Penny Lane that they're still using the imperial system?

  • @deldarel
    @deldarel Před 8 lety +472

    Alright, I'll buy a calendar in 3 million years.
    Gotta put that date on my...
    oh...

    • @YamamotoTV2021
      @YamamotoTV2021 Před 3 lety +4

      Lol first reply I find that funny…

    • @YamamotoTV2021
      @YamamotoTV2021 Před 3 lety +4

      Also, 117 is the telephone number for the time-broadcasting service in Japan, which they call the _jihō._

    • @emirhannecip3258
      @emirhannecip3258 Před 2 lety

      Best comment!

    • @ilickcatnip
      @ilickcatnip Před 2 lety

      Cracked me up 😂

  • @QuarioQuario54321
    @QuarioQuario54321 Před 4 lety +1063

    Pope Gregory was probably thinking “by the time that happens humanity will have found a better way to keep track of time”

    • @pedronunes3063
      @pedronunes3063 Před 3 lety +75

      Or maybe: "I'd be okay with a week off after 15000 years."
      That's basically for how much time humanity has existed.

    • @acmenipponair
      @acmenipponair Před 3 lety +15

      Or perhabs they noticed, that the earth is becoming slower. I mean, yes, it's only seconds, but we are talking about astrophysics, who only from the movement of the planets accounted that there must be more planets than six... And that displacements were tiny. So perhabs they recognized, that the earth time is not 100% stable and therefore in some thousand years it don't matter anymore

    • @qgde3rty8uiojh90
      @qgde3rty8uiojh90 Před 3 lety +18

      "...or the rapture will have happened..." 😇

    • @pappagamingpoo9766
      @pappagamingpoo9766 Před 3 lety

      @@pedronunes3063 No much longer than that

    • @AB-wf8ek
      @AB-wf8ek Před 3 lety +3

      @@pedronunes3063 Humanity has been around for at least 200,000 years

  • @MilanTheAngel
    @MilanTheAngel Před 7 lety +3257

    *The Parker Calendar*
    It's not quite perfect, but its very close..

    • @brycebenz5902
      @brycebenz5902 Před 6 lety +59

      #ParkerCirle

    • @david82633
      @david82633 Před 6 lety +80

      * #Parkersquare

    • @mgsquared5204
      @mgsquared5204 Před 6 lety +10

      ;snop170 there’s a Parker square and a Parker circle. The Parker square came a lot earlier.

    • @partynhouse
      @partynhouse Před 6 lety +1

      Carrot Slice you should check persian/solar hijri calendar

    • @otesunki
      @otesunki Před 6 lety

      Classic Parker Square.

  • @flikkie72
    @flikkie72 Před 7 lety +343

    I would have preferred the 0th of March, that way we could all agree that - eventhough it's a day - it's not a day and we can collectively do nothing.

    • @kcuhc84
      @kcuhc84 Před 7 lety +17

      Agreed, except if you have to be sworn in to office or something like that, it could be reserved for oath day.

    • @Patrick94GSR
      @Patrick94GSR Před 7 lety +33

      Babies born on the 0th? lol a zero day birthday. :-P

    • @user-ec6kt2fg7m
      @user-ec6kt2fg7m Před 6 lety +3

      Donuts Dooonuuutttssss!!!!!

    • @yashgaikwad7516
      @yashgaikwad7516 Před 6 lety +1

      It's a Parker square of a day

    • @rafaelrafaelrafael
      @rafaelrafaelrafael Před 5 lety

      @@Patrick94GSR it's a no labour day.

  • @dan339dan
    @dan339dan Před 8 lety +500

    How about altering the Earth's orbit to fit our calendar? Problem fixed!

    • @eveeeon341
      @eveeeon341 Před 8 lety +27

      +TheCheungDan Sounds like a very religious way to go about it, and very fitting for our Gregorian calendar.

    • @Pattonator14
      @Pattonator14 Před 8 lety +27

      +TheCheungDan I'm sure if we did the "everyone in China jump at once" thing we could work out how to adjust our orbit

    • @robsbackyardastrophotograp8885
      @robsbackyardastrophotograp8885 Před 8 lety

      +Smokestacks actually, if we moved closer, we'd speed up to balance ourselves again, same thing but with slowing if we backed out

    • @Pattonator14
      @Pattonator14 Před 8 lety +2

      Agustas Stephaunzz you'd just have to get people to keep doing it then ;)

    • @dan339dan
      @dan339dan Před 8 lety +3

      Smokestacks
      Nope, when you fall down, the process reverts. But everyone walk east or west will do. It has to do with rotational force.

  • @nolansprojects2840
    @nolansprojects2840 Před 7 lety +16

    As a leap year baby born on feb. 29, 2000, I have done my research, crunched numbers, and looked at many calendars, and have figured out similar information, but that last part of your equation was a good touch!

  • @funnymyth1827
    @funnymyth1827 Před 6 lety +283

    "One great thing about being a pope, I guess, is that you are good at getting a lot of people to change their behavior on seemingly arbitrary reasons." LMAO you right

    • @98cents
      @98cents Před 3 lety +7

      Very few people would take him that serious nowadays. He might spur a world convention to discuss problems, but outright demanding others to comply would be pretty insulting to a lot of nations, and only the most devout, such as Italy (mainly because the Vatican is... in Italy), would give it any credence.

    • @yourpalpalmetto979
      @yourpalpalmetto979 Před rokem +1

      The pope is still pretty influencial, a potential war between Argentina and Chile was stopped because of him in the 1980s, pretty good imo.

    • @williampatrick8814
      @williampatrick8814 Před 11 měsíci

      Evil is not arbitrary. Cathar 2021. Boom.

  • @aarontt
    @aarontt Před 8 lety +431

    Even better than binary - write the years in hexadecimal. Then it's just whenever the year ends in 80 or 00.

    • @jacksainthill8974
      @jacksainthill8974 Před 8 lety +19

      +Aaron Traynor
      And when they don't, add FA.

    • @3Ppaatt
      @3Ppaatt Před 8 lety +2

      +Aaron Traynor But every four years is every time the year ends in 0,4,8, or B, which is too much to remember.

    • @jacksainthill8974
      @jacksainthill8974 Před 8 lety +8

      Ppaatt
      Er - B is eleven; C is twelve.

    • @aarontt
      @aarontt Před 8 lety +12

      +Ppaatt why is that any more difficult than remembering 0, 4, 8, 12, and 16?

    • @jacksainthill8974
      @jacksainthill8974 Před 8 lety +2

      Aaron Traynor
      No need to remember a digit for sixteen, because there won't be one. In hexadecimal, a sixteen-multiple terminates in '0', which you had already listed.

  • @reeper147
    @reeper147 Před 7 lety +423

    I've always been in favor of a 13 month calendar. It has the benefit of keeping dates and days of the week synced until the very last day of the year. The first 12 months of the year have exactly 28 days each, making them multiples of the number of days in a week, so for the entire year, you would know that the 1st is always a monday, or that the 27th is always a saturday. The final month of the year has 29 days, so the first 28 are the same as the other months, and then it shifts by one, unless it is a leap year, in which case it has 30 days, and shifts by 2.
    So for example, in year 1, the first is always a monday. In fact, mondays are always either 1st, 8th, 15th, or 22nd. This trend continues throughout the year, until the final month, when there is also a monday which falls on the 29th. Then the next year starts, and your 1st, 8th, 15th, and 22nd's all fall on Tuesdays now. This might cause some confusion, if you were always used to an 8th being a monday, or a 13th being a saturday. Of course, this could be fixed by making the last one (or two) days of the 13th month a special vacation day, with no assigned week day name. A blank day (or two) if you will.
    This can significantly simplify scheduling various things, such as doctor appointments, school holidays, vacations, and work days. You'll never have to look up whether the 20th is a week day or not, as it is always a saturday, assuming the blank day is appropriated into this calendar system.

    • @g.seangourlay2593
      @g.seangourlay2593 Před 7 lety +26

      reeper147 I like this calendar, but only if you keep the blank day. and keep the year regular. is it your creation? my personal calendar skips Saturdays, leaving a six day week, with the 1st on a Sunday and the 30th on a Friday with 5 weeks a month, 60 weeks per year, and 5 or 6 saturdays reintroduced on the 31st of every other month, so you have a built in 3 day weekend every other month or so.

    • @g.seangourlay2593
      @g.seangourlay2593 Před 7 lety +5

      I call it the gordonian regular calendar.

    • @reeper147
      @reeper147 Před 7 lety +23

      I'm not sure if I am the only one who thought of it, I am sure someone else noticed that 365 is divisible by 13 with just a remainder of 1. But I came up with the idea independently, for what it is worth. I like yours too, both are better solutions than what we have now.
      The two main reasons I advocate for my calendar is 1) The fact that you will always know what day of the week a date is, and 2) Each month has the same number of days. No using your knuckles to check and see if the month has 28, 30, or 31 days.
      My only question about your calendar, is how you handle February. Do you just treat it like a regular month that ends early?

    • @g.seangourlay2593
      @g.seangourlay2593 Před 7 lety

      February has a 31st day only on leap years. May June august October December always have a 31st.

    • @sabinrawr
      @sabinrawr Před 6 lety +30

      The "blank day" has been thought of before, and I'm personally a fan of it. However, there will be a great deal of religious opposition, as many monotheistic faiths consider the unbroken 7-day cycle to be central to their belief system. In order for the "blank day" to work, each year the churches, synagogues, mosques, and temples would have to shift their holy day of rest back one day to account for the shift. Every seven years, the blank day will be a holy day.

  • @Blackbird74733
    @Blackbird74733 Před 3 lety +36

    I did a bit of math on my own comparing this proposed calendar to the Gregorian calendar and found something interesting. If every 3200 years we skip a leap year, the calendars become exactly the same in terms of long term drift. Under the Gregorian calendar, we have 776 leap years every 3200 years, while this calendar has 775 in the same period.

    • @sk8rdman
      @sk8rdman Před rokem +5

      His 2800 year rule only works because he ignores any digits beyond the 4th. All it does is takes out 3 leap years every 10,000 years, so if we could apply it to the multiples of any multiple of 4 years that is less than 3333 (1/3 of 10k years), but greater than 2500 (1/4 of 10k years) and it will work just the same. You just have to be careful that the number you use is not a multiple of 100 unless it's also a multiple of 400. Using multiples of 400 gets around this problem, which is what both you and Matt did with 2800 and 3200, but even though it looks the nicest and is easiest to memorize, there's no mathematical reason why it needs to be a multiple of 400. There are no multiples of 4 which can multiply by 2 or 3 to get another multiple of 100, so any other multiple of 4 (that is not a multiple of 100) between 2500 and 3333 will work equally well with this rule.
      Personally, I prefer your 3200 rule because it means that the removed leap years are more evenly spaced over the course of any given 10,000 year period.

  • @christinam2805
    @christinam2805 Před 5 lety +34

    "that's longer than the sun is gonna last... I think we have this sorted" haha touche

  • @SoulSukkur
    @SoulSukkur Před 8 lety +215

    looks like i gotta mark my calendar for 3.372 million years from now, for when I should buy --
    ...
    another calendar.
    hmm

  • @fishandchips8813
    @fishandchips8813 Před 8 lety +66

    You and the rest of the numberphile crew have tangibly enriched my life.Thank you for this!

    • @standupmaths
      @standupmaths  Před 8 lety +39

      Our pleasure! Thanks for watching the videos.

  • @kpaasial
    @kpaasial Před 3 lety +22

    Julius Caeser got it wrong initially, in his new calendar the leap years were every 3rd year. It took Augustus to fix this error and have leap years every 4th year (with the standard exceptions).

    • @ethanfrank670
      @ethanfrank670 Před 3 lety +3

      I think it was the priests who misinterpreted what his calendar was, not caesar himself, because of the confusing way romans talked about numbers

    • @feynstein1004
      @feynstein1004 Před 3 lety +1

      I was looking for this comment lol

  • @Boba0514
    @Boba0514 Před 4 lety +78

    Now imagine that the perfect year with integer number of days turns out to be a leap year...

  • @andyswales3516
    @andyswales3516 Před 8 lety +437

    What a Parker Square of a system.

  • @leomoran142
    @leomoran142 Před 7 lety +78

    Britain and its colonies were by no means the last to switch to the Gregorian Calendar. It took becoming defunct for the Russian Empire to switch to the Gregorian Calendar, adopted in 1918

    • @mamamheus7751
      @mamamheus7751 Před 5 lety +13

      Which is why some historians talk about the October/November and February/March revolutions. One month being the Russian date, the other being the Gregorian. I have to stop and try to remember which is which lol

    • @XenophonSoulis
      @XenophonSoulis Před 4 lety +1

      Greece in 1925 I think.

    • @696190
      @696190 Před 4 lety

      And China in 1949. Plenty of religions and denominations still follow older calendars

    • @XenophonSoulis
      @XenophonSoulis Před 4 lety

      @@696190 Israel has found the best solution so far. They are not christians, so there is no point in saying BC and AD, so they use Common Era and Before Common Era, but the years are the same. As an atheist, I can tell that this solution is perfect.

    • @jshariff786
      @jshariff786 Před 4 lety +7

      @@XenophonSoulis Merely changing notation doesn't solve the problem at hand -- you're still using the exact same calendar. The problem at hand is that the tropical year is not an integer number of days. Try to keep up.

  • @blue_leader_5756
    @blue_leader_5756 Před 4 lety +48

    Matt: We have to fix the calendar so it drifts every couple of trillion years
    Also Matt: Give or take a bit

  • @ahlpym
    @ahlpym Před 3 lety +9

    I was going to argue that Matt should have waited 5 days longer to release this video, so that it released on Feb 29. But then I remembered that Feb 24 is the actual leap day, and the remaining days of February just get pushed back.

  • @PopeLando
    @PopeLando Před 2 lety +17

    Trivia question: How many Olympic Games have taken place in a non-leap year?
    Two: Paris 1900 (not a leap year) and Tokyo 2020 (took place in 2021)

  • @ChristianFS1
    @ChristianFS1 Před 6 lety +28

    Matt Parker: the only person capable of turning the word "binary" into a punchline.

  • @codys2018
    @codys2018 Před 3 lety +12

    Caesar's fella's did a pretty decent job considering. They trusted future smart folks would be able to parse the date if it really mattered.
    Good on them.
    And you too pal.

  • @pmnt_
    @pmnt_ Před 4 lety +129

    or alternatively, we keep the Gregorian calendar and add extra leap seconds to keep things in sync. Which is, coincidentally, what we are doing since 1972.

    • @limepop340
      @limepop340 Před 4 lety +46

      just you wait until politicians seize control of leap seconds and start adding/removing them for their own gain

    • @jshariff786
      @jshariff786 Před 4 lety +49

      Leap seconds are solving a *different* problem...which is that a day is not a consistent number of SI seconds, due to the variability and slowing of Earth's rotation.
      Matt is talking about the problem that a tropical year is not an integer number of days...which is the problem that the intercalations of the Gregorian calendar try to solve (albeit imperfectly). This is still the only solution we have to this day.

    • @shirou9790
      @shirou9790 Před 3 lety +12

      Exactly what jtron84 said. The goal of leap seconds is to do so that the average solar noon stays at noon (that is, on Greenwich meridian in UTC: the difference between the timezone you are in and your actual longitude* might add a delay but this delay will stay consistent).
      The thing is that a tropical year isn't a whole number of mean solar days, so you have to make a different correction for that problem (and this is what leap days are about).
      If you say that you'll divide the tropical year exactly into 365 days no matter what, you might get inconsistencies along the lines of having noon during the night and midnight during the day--because your day defined as 1/365 of the tropical year does not have the correct length. The day/night cycle and the cycle of seasons are two independent cycles hence the two independent corrections

    • @Anonymous-df8it
      @Anonymous-df8it Před 8 měsíci +1

      @@jshariff786 Isn't a second *_defined_* as 1/86400 of a day?!

    • @TheMoonRover
      @TheMoonRover Před 2 měsíci

      @@Anonymous-df8it Historically, yes. However the modern definition comes from defining the unperturbed ground-state hyperfine transition frequency of the caesium 133 atom to be 9 192 631 770 Hz.

  • @Macconator2010
    @Macconator2010 Před 8 lety +36

    "Tough luck says the Universe" - CGP Grey.

    • @stevethea5250
      @stevethea5250 Před 4 lety +4

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  • @Jimpozcan
    @Jimpozcan Před 8 lety +151

    One year is 365.2421891 _years_ long ... (1:18).

    • @MasterHackerChannel
      @MasterHackerChannel Před 8 lety

      Years?

    • @Kazmomusic
      @Kazmomusic Před 8 lety +33

      +jimpozcaner He dun goofed, what ever.
      He also said .2[5]2, but who cares :)

    • @Jimpozcan
      @Jimpozcan Před 8 lety +1

      Mat Kaz I don'T _care_, just pointing his goof out.

    • @gasparRaduB
      @gasparRaduB Před 8 lety +1

      +Mat Kaz i was looking for this

    • @freebite
      @freebite Před 8 lety

      +Gaspar Radu Yup didn't wanna repost it if someone already did.

  • @zenice1911
    @zenice1911 Před 4 lety +398

    Who’s here in 2020 when it’s a leap year again?

    • @krzysztofjuszczak906
      @krzysztofjuszczak906 Před 4 lety +3

      Pikachu me

    • @mr.goodcat582
      @mr.goodcat582 Před 4 lety +10

      I’m here in 655000 year and it didn’t work.

    • @sidewalk__
      @sidewalk__ Před 4 lety +2

      Yes and it’s February when there is an extra day which means if there was someone born on the 29th February in my class they would be 4

    • @tev5040
      @tev5040 Před 4 lety +1

      CZcams recommendations are pretty smart

    • @Th3Curs3dChild
      @Th3Curs3dChild Před 4 lety

      What are you talking yet?

  • @glueball0230
    @glueball0230 Před 4 lety +37

    Nobody:
    CZcams in 2020: Since 2020 is a leap year I'll ignore the fact that you've already seen this video and put it in your recommendation section

  • @doriancostley9075
    @doriancostley9075 Před 8 lety +8

    So in the absence of a reliable long term answer to the ascribed problem, a series of short term solutions that change with the problem is the best solution.

  • @HeavyboxesDIYMaster
    @HeavyboxesDIYMaster Před 8 lety +5

    10:10 This is why I have not purchased ANY calendars and I await for that day, my friend.

  • @ahmedsyed7241
    @ahmedsyed7241 Před 6 lety +7

    "The optimal time to buy a calendar" 😂
    I love your videos.

  • @ChicagoSkyliners
    @ChicagoSkyliners Před 6 lety +1

    It is people like you that make me realize how little I have accomplished in life. Well done video. Educational yet entertaining.

  • @joshinils
    @joshinils Před 8 lety +529

    4:40 shots fired

  • @amandaperez3238
    @amandaperez3238 Před 8 lety +611

    At 1:22 he says 5 instead of 4

    • @nevertrustanatom1486
      @nevertrustanatom1486 Před 8 lety +104

      And he says years instead of days, who cares.

    • @connortremblay1259
      @connortremblay1259 Před 8 lety +74

      a real parker square of word choice that is

    • @joelshewmaker3567
      @joelshewmaker3567 Před 7 lety +22

      My policy is that if you can still understand his meaning clearly, then it's fine. Not everyone can be perfect. :p

    • @brycebenz5902
      @brycebenz5902 Před 6 lety +8

      And ONE year is apparently 365.242 YEARS long. Well if you say so... ( He says years instead of days)

    • @lyrimetacurl0
      @lyrimetacurl0 Před 5 lety +5

      It's a Parker 5.

  • @okamichamploo
    @okamichamploo Před 4 lety

    Thanks. I was just about to go to the store and pick up a calendar, but after watching this video I decided to wait.
    Gotta catch that optimum time slot!

  • @PopeLando
    @PopeLando Před 3 lety +2

    8:54 "The Solar System itself is not so cut and dried" is the most Australian Matt has sounded for years.

  • @javierbg1995
    @javierbg1995 Před 8 lety +76

    I like to think that if the US hadn't switched to the Gregorian calendar before its independence they would still stick to it and defend it like they do with Imperial units.

    • @SkyrimHod
      @SkyrimHod Před 8 lety +8

      +javierbg1995 Not likely. The main reasons the US sticks with imperial units are:
      1. It's hard to get everyone to start thinking in the new unit system. Even if people know how to convert between the two, they still start off thinking in feet and then have to figure out how many meters it is. It would only be after a long time of using metric that people would start automatically thinking that way.
      2. It would cost a lot of money to switch over all the existing tools, equipment, signs etc,.
      Neither of those really apply to switching calendars.
      1.The years would still be the exact same except for the question of when to have a leap year or not and that would only be an issue at all once every 4 years, not every time you wanted to measure anything.
      2. New calendars are printed every year anyway, so it wouldn't cost anything extra to switch to the new ones instead.

    • @jangxx
      @jangxx Před 8 lety +16

      +SkyrimHod The same is true for every other country that switched (which happens to be almost every country there is) and it worked out for them.

    • @8ytan
      @8ytan Před 8 lety +2

      +javierbg1995 The US uses metric for most important things anyway.

    • @Poldovico
      @Poldovico Před 8 lety +7

      +SkyrimHod Well, switching to metric was "hard" (but actually not that hard at all) for every other country, but really all it takes is to start teaching both systems at school which will let children understand how much simpler it is to do unit conversion in metric, and then switch to metric only on the next generation.
      Give it less than a century and you're done.

    • @kathrynblodgett1969
      @kathrynblodgett1969 Před 8 lety +2

      Damn straight. It's our God given right to say "F#%& You to the rest of the world if we want to.

  • @forthehunt3335
    @forthehunt3335 Před 8 lety +5

    Hearing a mathematician say "give or take a bit" will always crack me up.

  • @Alkis05
    @Alkis05 Před 2 lety

    Yeah, I figured it out by myself the same way the guy at the end did: with continued fractions. they are particularly useful for finding the periodicity of the corrections if you want to make the most precise system.

  • @YamamotoTV2021
    @YamamotoTV2021 Před 3 lety +1

    I have created my own calendar system called the Yamamoto Calendar. The Yamamoto calendar is the same as the Julian Calendar, except for the fact that there are four 5-year gaps in between XX40 and XX60 every century, and every 500 years we have a super leap year (that is, one where February has 30 days). This means that the years 2045, 2050, and 2055 are leap years instead of the years 2044, 2048, 2052, and 2056. This year (2021), the 21st of March (Gregorian) corresponds to the 1st of March (Yamamoto).

  • @IamGrimalkin
    @IamGrimalkin Před 8 lety +118

    I don't believe you went all the way through the whole video without mentioning leap seconds.

    • @standupmaths
      @standupmaths  Před 8 lety +59

      Leap seconds fix a different problem. So as much as I love talking about them, I thought I'd leave them out to keep the video simple.

    • @alexcalafuri9201
      @alexcalafuri9201 Před 8 lety +1

      What are leap seconds ?

    • @stevewood8914
      @stevewood8914 Před 8 lety +20

      +Meatloaf Lammer The amount of time it takes for the Earth to spin isn't exactly 24 hours so clocks are getting slowly out of sync with the day/night cycle. Or they would be if it weren't for leap seconds. They are extra seconds added to a day on average once every 18 months (it varies) either on the end of June or December. On these days the last second before midnight is 23:59.60.

    • @2Cerealbox
      @2Cerealbox Před 8 lety +7

      +Meatloaf Lammer That's a correction you have to add because the Earth's orbit around the sun is not 100% predictable. They're more or less random and have to be added in arbitrarily causing massive headaches for programmers.

    • @UlyssesKrunk
      @UlyssesKrunk Před 8 lety +8

      +standupmaths I hope you know this means you now need to make a leap second video.

  • @AJGoff110
    @AJGoff110 Před 8 lety +15

    10:04 i think this video should've been titled "the optimal time to buy a calendar"

  • @brianjuelpedersen6389
    @brianjuelpedersen6389 Před 5 lety +1

    I like how this video is actually very informative - and funny at the same time due to the extreme and very much intended nerdiness.

  • @davidfarinaofficial
    @davidfarinaofficial Před 5 lety +1

    So satisfying. As a software dev the first thing I thought when seeing 128 was „thats a nice number“. Glad he made a binary calculation for that heh

  • @kennethflorek8532
    @kennethflorek8532 Před 8 lety +11

    4:38 There have been others, if I recall, with enough persuasive power to get people to change their minds about seemingly arbitrary things. Henry VIII, for one, comes to mind. Henry persuaded the English population that it made sense for him to be the pope of England. Henry also revised the theory of divorce, whereby one may lop off the head of one's spouse if one is in the mood, provided you are the pope of England. Previously, people had the opinion that made you a homicidal maniac. Henry was persuasive.

  • @chentiangemalc
    @chentiangemalc Před 8 lety +27

    This is why we should change to the stardate system.

  • @bxdanny
    @bxdanny Před 6 lety +1

    I think he means put back a leap day in a year that is a multiple of 625,024 (itself multiple of 128), not take it out. But that is truly a tiny quibble. The 128-year calendar is a great idea. But someone has pointed out that the same net result (a calendar year of 365.2421875 days) can be achieved by modifying our Gregorian calendar to omit the leap day every 3200 years (every 8th 400-year cycle).

  • @jimdecamp7204
    @jimdecamp7204 Před 3 lety +1

    In 1712, in Sweden, February had 30 days. In Alaska, Friday October 6, 1867 was immediately followed by Friday, October 18, 1867.

  • @mosesramirez6330
    @mosesramirez6330 Před 8 lety +13

    I want this guy to be the next Doctor. He reminds me of a mashup of Ten and Eleven.

  • @davidepiazzoni
    @davidepiazzoni Před 8 lety +5

    Hi there! Nice video. Just an info about calendar drifting: Russia did not adopt the Gregorian Calendar until the sovietic revolution; the result was that the "October Revolution" (as for russian/julian calendar) actually took place in November (as for the gregorian calendar)!

  • @hurdit
    @hurdit Před 7 lety

    Thank you. This video showed an incredible revelation. Mathematics is the tool in solving many problems, but there's more yet to come with this resolution. I don't know what it is but I'm all ears. Pi rules! Pi could be the universal language, as infinite as it is.

  • @wombat4191
    @wombat4191 Před rokem

    I just love the fact that the error in Julian calendar just happens to be almost exactly a power of 2.

  • @itsdox7433
    @itsdox7433 Před 8 lety +20

    So Parker has this sorted..............but not quite.
    PARKER SQUARE BLAST FROM THE PAST

  • @JesseRaylabrancaro
    @JesseRaylabrancaro Před 8 lety +5

    You need to roll out the Parkerian calendar now. Don't wait.

  • @steffahn
    @steffahn Před 7 lety

    Love the continued fraction approach

  • @Crissov
    @Crissov Před 5 lety

    One nice feature of the Gregorian leap cycle is that its 146097 days equal exactly 20871 weeks. Many other cycles, including 128 years, lack this property. 293 years with 71 leap days does work, but would require a more complicated, but potentially also better distributing leap rule.

  • @ninjaed13
    @ninjaed13 Před 8 lety +19

    1:30 "365.25..." Either you or the video is wrong, I'm going with the assumption that post production Matt is more reliable.

    • @unvergebeneid
      @unvergebeneid Před 8 lety +3

      +Debated Nothing Yes he is. He misspoke, not miswrote.

    • @Betelgeuse1996
      @Betelgeuse1996 Před 8 lety +3

      He also said years instead of days.

    • @standupmaths
      @standupmaths  Před 8 lety +20

      If in doubt: always go with Post-Production Matt.

  • @Holobrine
    @Holobrine Před 8 lety +6

    This power of 2 stuff would make this calendar very intuitive to computers. In a way, the calendars are already stored in binary, so switching to every 128 years would only mean changing a setting in your smartphone.

    • @3Ppaatt
      @3Ppaatt Před 8 lety +3

      +Holobrine Intuitive to computers

  • @andrasfogarasi5014
    @andrasfogarasi5014 Před 4 lety +2

    The disparity counter starts at 0 at Year 1.
    Every year we add 0.24219 to the disparity counter, unless it is above 1.
    In the case described above, we instead subtract 0.75781 and have a leap year.
    Solved.

  • @TYEDYEGYE1
    @TYEDYEGYE1 Před 6 lety +11

    I LOVE IT! I love messing with calendars, years, months, weeks and days! Have you ever thought about creating a binary week? (i.e. a week being 4 days long or 8 days long?) We already have a semi-binary calendar with seasons involved. What would a full binary calendar look like? Thoughts?

    • @sebastianpiotrowski5973
      @sebastianpiotrowski5973 Před 6 lety

      the shortest week is 5 day 365/5=73 weeks

    • @MegaLoquendo2000
      @MegaLoquendo2000 Před rokem

      It took me years to get it, the .2421 days doesn't refer to hours that we could simply measure by looking at the sunset and sunrise slowly switching places, but rather the additional distance the earth has to move to reach the same spot as the previous year.

  • @jeffc5974
    @jeffc5974 Před 8 lety +31

    I find it inappropriately funny when you mention that they both agree that it was Thursday. I can't quite explain why I find it so hilarious, but every time I think of it, I can't contain my giggle reflex.

    • @sabinrawr
      @sabinrawr Před 6 lety +4

      One of the central problems with trying to fix the calendar is that many monotheistic religions (including the one that the Pope presides over) rely on an unbroken 7-day cycle. So, for religious reasons, the days of the week would still line up, even in the date does not. This is also why adding a "blank" day that is not assigned to a day-of-week label would be difficult to implement.

    • @GDNachoo
      @GDNachoo Před 4 lety +5

      "Besides being in war, both powerful nations agreed it was IN FACT... a Thrusday"

    • @stevenvanhulle7242
      @stevenvanhulle7242 Před 4 lety

      It might have an impact if the attacked party was on Sunday, and the attacking party wasn't. Given how religious people were back then.

    • @juanausensi499
      @juanausensi499 Před 3 lety +1

      @@sabinrawr They are a bunch of countries that have 2 calendars, a civil one and a religious one.

  • @strongside4565
    @strongside4565 Před 8 lety +10

    I'm not sure everyone will be on board with calling this the year 11111100000.

  • @UteChewb
    @UteChewb Před 5 lety

    Ha. Nice. This reminds me that when I wrote my first science fiction novel I worked out a calendar that included when and how to add leap days. Lots of fun that probably no one else even noticed. Took a while to work out and it occupied a brief paragraph in the appendix.

  • @GPPeace0
    @GPPeace0 Před 7 lety

    You're just awesome Matt! Keep it up!

  • @warmanfuzzy2198
    @warmanfuzzy2198 Před 8 lety +7

    It would be fun if that one year where the actually year is 365 days was a leap year with the current calendar. If that makes sense.

  • @MikeBMW
    @MikeBMW Před 8 lety +5

    We're gonna party like it's 2048! To the power of two, even - it''s a digital blast!
    (New Prince song above)

  • @lolerskates876
    @lolerskates876 Před 3 lety

    Calander Unboxing videos? Binary based Calanders? I can't wait for that spinoff from the calculator series

  • @sebastianpiotrowski5973

    Hi, did you start counting years from year 1 or 0 ? Can you give as a mathematical pattern which you use to calculate a year drift?

  • @pokedude583
    @pokedude583 Před 8 lety +18

    So what your saying is that rather than fixing the calendar, it's actually the solar system that needs fixing?

    • @LaPingvino
      @LaPingvino Před 8 lety

      +pokédude583 it's the video that needs fixing ;)

  • @RedsBoneStuff
    @RedsBoneStuff Před 8 lety +7

    From 1:21 to 1:27 is a double epicfail! XD
    Seriously though, your videos are a really good thing for this world.

  • @yahccs1
    @yahccs1 Před 2 lety

    My Dad was in favour of making 1 day a year or 2 days in a leap year to not be days of the week - then the calendars for every year would have the dates on the same days of the week so you don't have to change them apart from sometimes adding that 2nd 'unnamed' day.
    I'm glad you mentioned how variations in the Earth's rotation changes the length of the day - and the orbit changes... I suppose the sun's mass changes over time changing the orbital periods of all the planets -then there's all the precession effects as well moving the equinoxes (seasonal year points) around in about 26,000 years - and that might change.
    The last data I looked up had the tropical year as 365.2421909 [mean solar] days, so I've been using that as the most accurate. If the mean solar day is fixed as 24 hours, then as the rotation (sidereal day) changes and the year changes, the mean solar day actual time changes so the definition of hours, minutes and seconds will change. If the day length is increasing slightly, then we are aging more per day when we are older than we did when we were younger!! No wonder the days seem to go by faster. !!
    If we measure light years by calendar years that might change over time too, just as parsec distance would change if the Earth's orbital distance changes.
    If the fraction of day left over in the number of days in a seasonal year was closer to 1 than 0, wouldn't we have 'skip days' instead of 'leap days'? I mean for example if it was 364.75 days we would have years of 365 days 3 years in 4 and one skip day is 'skipped' in the skip year!! At least that's how the calendar works on my imaginary planet...! They have skip years with one fewer 'celebration day' or whatever you call those extra days that could be left out of some years. I haven't yet worked out or thought about how their calendar year length changes over very long timescales. I don't think it matters over a few centuries or a few millennia!

  • @jeffbourassa4615
    @jeffbourassa4615 Před 5 lety

    How does the Mayan calendar stack up on the days drift? Is it tru that it’s more accurate than Julian or Gregorian calendars?

  • @ABaumstumpf
    @ABaumstumpf Před 8 lety +40

    1:22 - screen says ".24" - you say "point two FIVE" :P

  • @DaveScottAggie
    @DaveScottAggie Před 8 lety +30

    They do have these leap seconds every so often. Is that to correct the length of a day?

    • @fede142857
      @fede142857 Před 8 lety +8

      Indeed, that's what they are added for.

    • @DaveScottAggie
      @DaveScottAggie Před 8 lety +4

      Thanks.

    • @razaelll
      @razaelll Před 8 lety +12

      +David Scott Yes, but the thing is, it's really hard to keep all analog clocks in sync and nobody actually gives a shit about leap seconds. All computers sync the time anyway and most of analog clocks are off by a minute or two anyway. It's both pointless and very important simultaneously. My brain hurts

    • @tedmeisterb
      @tedmeisterb Před 8 lety +1

      +David Scott Yes but now that's got me thinking, with these leap seconds that we are adding every so often, won't that end up making the Gregorian system work overall?

    • @jeffnarum1373
      @jeffnarum1373 Před 8 lety +17

      +Edward Brightman
      Wait a second...

  • @curlybrace314
    @curlybrace314 Před 6 lety +1

    This video has inspired me to use a "every 4 unless it's divisible by 128" calendar in a bit of fantastical fiction I'm writing. Maybe I should include some folks grumbling how it's not *quite* accurate enough to their tastes...

  • @vincesmith2499
    @vincesmith2499 Před rokem +1

    When was it decided to change the start of the year from March 1 to January 1? Was that around the same time England converted to the Gregorian calendar?

  • @caseye11is
    @caseye11is Před 8 lety +19

    sounds good, but if we get around to space travel in the next 90,000 years then im betting the Gregorian Calendar will become obsolete

  • @Sahl0
    @Sahl0 Před 3 lety +11

    Parker: This calender is perfect
    People 5300000000000 years later: Huh we are off by 1 day? Who made this calender?
    Parker's great great great great ... great great grandson: **Rick Astley of 5300000002016 music plays**

  • @nomomotion
    @nomomotion Před 8 měsíci

    absolutely beautiful math

  • @ironicdutchmoonshade1394
    @ironicdutchmoonshade1394 Před 5 lety +3

    Since 1972 we have had a total of 27 leap seconds. They are fixing this, just not in a very structured manner.

  • @LazerField
    @LazerField Před 8 lety +11

    I would pay money for a full version of the song used at 10:40

    • @xxXthekevXxx
      @xxXthekevXxx Před 7 lety +1

      I'm reading this comment in the professor's voice lol

    • @abiramn9983
      @abiramn9983 Před 6 lety +1

      Enjoy: standupmaths.bandcamp.com/releases

  • @KishoreShenoy1994
    @KishoreShenoy1994 Před 8 lety +5

    A thief stole a calender once.
    He got 12 months.

    • @black_platypus
      @black_platypus Před 8 lety

      +Kishore Shenoy "was the sentence"? Maybe I don't get it, but it seems like there's a missed chance for driving the joke home ^^
      ...How about "he got 12 months"? That works on both levels

    • @KishoreShenoy1994
      @KishoreShenoy1994 Před 8 lety

      +Benjamin Philipp
      Altered.
      Cheers for the correction

    • @black_platypus
      @black_platypus Před 8 lety

      Kishore Shenoy
      Cool ^^
      It was more of a suggestion rather than a correction (who am I to say what's right in that situation? It's your joke after all) - but yes, I personally think it works better now :)

  • @supervegito2277
    @supervegito2277 Před 2 lety +1

    I like how he just kept going until he exceeded the Suns lifespan.

  • @dbtest117
    @dbtest117 Před 5 lety

    Hey do the same with calendars way before the julian. Some farmers still use moon calendars for managing when to do specific things. Also ancient israel used a moon calendar and they had every year a festival of the first harvest and it seems like it never failed.
    They had a 13th month, but I’ve never understood how it was implemented or how dynamic it was.
    Any math to share regarding moon calendars?

  • @xiaomarou9890
    @xiaomarou9890 Před 4 lety +7

    It is strange that you didn’t mention the Milanković calendar which is also known as the revised Julian calendar. It is a very accurate calendar which is actually used by the Orthodox Church referring to it as “the new calendar”.

  • @MichaelBerthelsen
    @MichaelBerthelsen Před 6 lety +83

    So who's up for a global party starting at 2:22 am on the 2nd of Febuary, 2048!!! ^___^ Wohoo, AMIRITE?!

    • @anirudhsilai5790
      @anirudhsilai5790 Před 6 lety +11

      My party would be on February 11th, 2048

    • @kevinjohnson4531
      @kevinjohnson4531 Před 5 lety +18

      My favorite stupid date trivia fact. 2/22/22 2:22:22 will be a Twosday [sic].

    • @louis_cgf9206
      @louis_cgf9206 Před 5 lety +10

      shouldn't it be 2nd of November cause 2^11 is 2048 so the date will be 2/11/48

    • @edwardnygma8533
      @edwardnygma8533 Před 5 lety +2

      @@louis_cgf9206 Yours is good too, but the top reply is also 2/11/48 via different formatting.

    • @BradenBest
      @BradenBest Před 5 lety +4

      @@edwardnygma8533 This is why we all need to use ISO 8601 en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_8601
      Edit: Oh look, youtube added automatic @/+ back in. And yet they can't implement basic markdown support. C'mon, guys. I want to write things like `this`, $2^(this)$ and [this](example.com) like I can in reddit/stackoverflow/github

  • @Terji
    @Terji Před 6 lety

    Ive always wanted to know the optimal time to buy a calendar. Setting a reminder on my phone for 3 million 372 thousand years from now. Cheers mate!

  • @hannuvepsalainen74
    @hannuvepsalainen74 Před 3 lety

    Hey Matt, is this the reason why Persian new year starts at a certain second (which changes) every year? with around 5 hours difference

  • @chakatfirepaw
    @chakatfirepaw Před 8 lety +14

    Your date for 'everyone' adopting the Gregorian calendar is rather Anglocentric. One must remember that the October Revolution started on November 7th, 1917.

  • @GDNachoo
    @GDNachoo Před 4 lety +15

    don't worry, Humanity isn't going to live another 3,216 years

    • @fritz46
      @fritz46 Před 2 lety

      Reading this in 2022, it sounds quite optimistic...

    • @Perririri
      @Perririri Před 2 lety +1

      Vesszen az emberiség!!

  • @Name-yf6xp
    @Name-yf6xp Před 5 lety +1

    10:12 Great, now i know when to buy a Calendar...... but where do i write the date down?

  • @stephaneclerc667
    @stephaneclerc667 Před 2 lety

    I hope the world will adopt your calendar

  • @joshinils
    @joshinils Před 8 lety +4

    11:35 you make it sound like we want the video to be over

  • @postbode30
    @postbode30 Před 8 lety +14

    But what if that moment of an integer number of days in a year falls during a leap year?

    • @robertr7923
      @robertr7923 Před 8 lety +1

      +mike postma its still an integer, cause 1 is an integer, whats the point?

    • @robertr7923
      @robertr7923 Před 8 lety

      +mike postma its still an integer, cause 1 is an integer, whats the point?

    • @Jimpozcan
      @Jimpozcan Před 8 lety

      +mike postma They'll probably have abolished leap years by then.

  • @jm-ky3ii
    @jm-ky3ii Před 4 lety

    Does the calculation consider the slowing of the earth? It's not much of course, but still when it's about so long event, It may change a little the data, right?

  • @VampireBuddha
    @VampireBuddha Před 3 lety

    03:25 - Actually, when Gregory introduced the new calendar, the Julian calendar was 12 days off. However, Gregory wanted the solstices and equinoxes to fall on the same day of the year they did in the year 325, when the Council of Nicaea was held; by this time, the Julian calendar had already lost two days, and so the date only jumped forward 10 days. This is why, if you trace things back, 1 January 1 in the Gregorian calendar is two days after 1 January 1 in the Julian calendar.
    The Gregorian calendar is impressively accurate, but 500 years before him, Omar Khayyam and colleagues came up with a better one. In Khayyam's calendar, known as the Jalali calendar after sultan Jalaluddin Malik-Shah I of Iran, who introduced it. In the Jalali calendar, years are arranged in 33-year cycles, in which the fifth year and every fourth year thereafter are leap years. The Jalali calendar is accurate to one day in 5,000 years, which is better than the Gregorian's 3,216 years.
    The Jalali calendar was used in Iran and Afghanistan until 1925, when it was replaced with the Solar Hijri calendar. This calendar, by design, cannot possibly drift, because there is no algorithmic scheme for leap years. Instead, New Year's Day falls on the day whose midnight is closest to the moment the centre of the north ascendant sun crosses the celestial equator; yes, the calendar is observation-based. New Year's Day can be reasonably predicted, but still has to be officially announced rather than calculated arbitrarily far back in time.

  • @Gunbudder
    @Gunbudder Před 8 lety +12

    Matt, you missed the best thing about leap time; leap seconds! There is no formula for calculating how many leap seconds there are. They are arbitrarily given out by the leap year wizard who sits atop his magical leap year throne ( we currently have 17 leap seconds). The only rule for leap seconds is that they are either given out in June or December. If you chose to ignore leap seconds because you think the leap second wizard is silly, you will never be able to accurately navigate using GPS.

    • @johncochran8497
      @johncochran8497 Před 8 lety +2

      +Gunhaver You might want to look again at the current number of leap seconds. There have been 26 leap seconds announced since 1972.

    • @Gunbudder
      @Gunbudder Před 8 lety +3

      You are right! I have been working with GPS too much. GPS time is not adjusted to leap seconds, and UTC is. This means GPS is ahead of UTC by 17 seconds (the magic number). GPS-UTC uses the 1980 epoch to begin counting (there wasn't really GPS before then... ok first navstar was 1978 but close enough). Basically 17 seconds is the magic number that gets you from special GPS time to the UTC time that the rest of the world uses. That is, until the IERS wizard creates another leap second!

    • @micahgruenwald9321
      @micahgruenwald9321 Před 8 lety +3

      They add another leap second if the clocks are off from the rotation of the earth by more than .9 seconds, nothing arbitrary.

    • @Gunbudder
      @Gunbudder Před 8 lety

      Fair enough. It only seems arbitrary because of the nature of the day length drift. You take all the fun out of the IERS wizard. They could choose not to add a leap second though even if it is passed the threshold. The wizard just promises that he won't...

    • @heronimousbrapson863
      @heronimousbrapson863 Před 5 lety

      Gunhaver Yes. The wizard lives next door to Hogwarts.

  • @Markovisch
    @Markovisch Před 7 lety +7

    The Parker Calender?

  • @ottolehikoinen6193
    @ottolehikoinen6193 Před 5 lety

    Best combo of calendars is shire, Iranian moon 126 year and 128-year. 29 and 30 day months plus extra days for lunar intercalation. The normal three year cycle is interrupted every 11th time by a year that is of adequate lenght. This is when we roll the moon to it's calendar position and start again with a leap second and enough microseconds, that happens at 08:03AM 12th of June
    Easy.

    • @ottolehikoinen6193
      @ottolehikoinen6193 Před 5 lety

      This means 5 or 6 solar holidays, 12 full months and 2 other 'lunar weeks' for the 11 or 12 days intercalation. Thus we can set the months so it's always full or new on the first day. On solar year, we might use eightfold division to get half quarters of 45 days. This woud mean solar 'weeks' of 9 days and lunar weeks of near correct lenght. The week currently in use is hopelessly inaccurate, almost 9 hours too short.

  • @RicheBright
    @RicheBright Před 5 lety

    The digits you were saying and what is on the video do not agree at about 1:22 in.
    I'm guessing it's okay to be a touch pedant in a situation where we're taking things out to seven decimals.
    Other than that nearly microscopic nit I just picked, this was excellent and will be fun to ponder later.
    Is there any way to do a rough estimate on the scale of the "irregular drift" part of things,, assuming no rogue gas giants go wandering through our solar system? Would a calendar reform good for over 100 thousand or 600 thousand years be worth doing?
    And what about the leap seconds we kick into our clocks here and there? Is that going to negate the need for the reforms you discussed?