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Let's stop counting centuries

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Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#41

Post by hgomersall »

semireg wrote: post #6
gcp123 wrote: post #2

Author makes a good point. "1700s" is both more intuitive and more concise than "18th century". The very first episode of Alex Trebeck's Jeopardy in 1984 illustrates how confusing this can be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDTxS9_CwZA The "Final Jeopardy" question simply asked on what date did the 20th century begin, and all three contestants got it wrong, leading to a 3-way tie.

The right answer was, and still is: Jan 1, 1901

No, the first century began Jan 1, 0000. Whether that year actually existed or not is irrelevant - we shouldn't change our counting system in the years 100, 200 etc.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#43

Post by hgomersall »

MarkLowenstein wrote: post #30

A lot of this runaround is happening because people get hung up on the fact that the "AD" era began as AD 1. But that year is not magic--it didn't even correlate with the year of Jesus's birth or death. So let's just start the AD era a year before, and call that year "AD 0". It can even overlap with BC 1. BC 1 is the same as AD 0. Fine, we can handle that, right? Then the 00s are [0, 100), 100s are [100, 200), etc. Z…

This is the right answer.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#44

Post by whycome »

readthenotes1 wrote: post #14
semireg wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The right answer was, and still is: Jan 1, 1901

How can that be if 15 of those centuries are on the Julian calendar?

Also, when they switched things in 1582:

https://www.britannica.com/story/ten-days-that-vanished-the-....

> The most surreal part of implementing the new calendar came in October 1582, when 10 days were dropped from the calendar to bring the vernal equinox from March 11 back to March 21. The church had chosen October to avoid skipping any major Christian festivals.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#45

Post by drewcoo »

milliams wrote: post #11

It's easy, we should have simply started counting centuries from zero. Centuries should be zero-indexed, then everything works. We do the same with people's ages. For the entire initial year of your life you were zero years old. Likewise, from years 0-99, zero centuries had passed so we should call it the zeroth century! At least this is how I justify to my students that zero-indexing makes sense. Everyone's fought t…

> we should have simply started counting centuries from zero

Latin, like Lua, is 1-indexed.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#46

Post by whycome »

runarberg wrote: post #40

> There’s no good way to refer to 2000-2009, sorry. The author is wrong here. The correct way (at least in spoken West Coast American English) is the Twenty-aughts . There is even a Wikipedia page dedicated to the term: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aughts If you want to be fancy you could spell it like the 20-aughts . I suppose there is no spelling it with only digits+s though, which maybe what the author was lookin…

I think you actually just agreed with them.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#48

Post by mmmmmbop »

jcelerier wrote: post #36
mmmmmbop wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> We do the same with people's ages. No, we don't. When we refer to 'the first year of life', we mean the time from birth until you turn 1. Similarly, you'd say something like 'you're a child in the first decade of your life and slowly start to mature into a young adult by the end of the second decade', referring to 0-9 and 10-19, respectively.

The first year of life is the year indexed with zero, just like the first centimeter/inch in a ruler is the centimeter/inch indexed with zero

I agree, that was my point.

Re: Let's stop counting centuries

#49

Post by runarberg »

gcp123 wrote: post #2

Author makes a good point. "1700s" is both more intuitive and more concise than "18th century". The very first episode of Alex Trebeck's Jeopardy in 1984 illustrates how confusing this can be: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KDTxS9_CwZA The "Final Jeopardy" question simply asked on what date did the 20th century begin, and all three contestants got it wrong, leading to a 3-way tie.

In Icelandic the 1-based towards counting is used almost everywhere. People do indeed say: “The first decade of the 19th century” to refer to the 18-aughts, and the 90s is commonly referred to as “The tenth decade”. This is also done to age ranges, people in their 20s (or 21-30 more precisely) are said to be þrítugsaldur (in the thirty age). Even the hour is sometime counted towards (though this is more rare among young folks), “að ganga fimm” (or going 5) means 16:01-17:00.

Speaking for my self, this doesn’t become any more intuitive the more you use this, people constantly confuse decades and get insulted by age ranges (and freaked out when suddenly the clock is “going five”). People are actually starting to refer to the 90s as nían (the nine) and the 20-aughts as tían (the ten). Thought I don’t think it will stick. When I want to be unambiguous and non-confusing I usually add the -og-eitthvað (and something) as a suffix to a year ending with zero, so the 20th century becomes nítjánhundruð-og-eitthvað, the 1990s, nítíu-og-eitthvað and a person in their 20s (including 20) becomes tuttugu-og-eitthvað.

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