» Dates as Fractions

Dates as Fractions

April 28, 2020 by Chris Johnson. Filed under
Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property WP_Term::$cat_ID is deprecated in /var/www/twodee/blog/wp-includes/category.php on line 378

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property WP_Term::$category_count is deprecated in /var/www/twodee/blog/wp-includes/category.php on line 379

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property WP_Term::$category_description is deprecated in /var/www/twodee/blog/wp-includes/category.php on line 380

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property WP_Term::$cat_name is deprecated in /var/www/twodee/blog/wp-includes/category.php on line 381

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property WP_Term::$category_nicename is deprecated in /var/www/twodee/blog/wp-includes/category.php on line 382

Deprecated: Creation of dynamic property WP_Term::$category_parent is deprecated in /var/www/twodee/blog/wp-includes/category.php on line 383
public.

Today is 4/28. As a fraction, today is $\frac{4}{28} = \frac{1}{7} \approx 0.143$. But how close is that to the proportion of the year that has passed? We are on day 119 of a year with 366 days, and $\frac{119}{366} \approx 0.325$. That’s a difference of approximately 0.182. That’s not very close.

Perhaps there are days whose rational numbers are closer? I had to find out, so I wrote a program. I’m gun-shy of date libraries, so I started with just this simple list of month lengths:

MONTH_LENGTHS = [31, 28, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31, 31, 30, 31, 30, 31]
YEAR_LENGTH = MONTH_LENGTHS.sum

I hardcoded February as a non-leap year.

Next up, because I like pivoting around data rather than code, I modeled the subject of our study using a class. Its methods interpret the date as various rational numbers: as a month-over-day, as a day-of-year, and as a day-over-month.

class Date
  attr_reader :month, :day, :doy

  def initialize(month, day, doy)
    @month = month
    @day = day
    @doy = doy
  end

  def doyProportion
    @doy.to_f / YEAR_LENGTH
  end

  def monthOverDay
    @month.to_f / @day
  end

  def dayOverMonth
    @day.to_f / @month
  end
end

To make a list of all the dates of the year, I decided to iterate through the interval [1, 365], maintaining separate month and day counters as I go. Upon reaching the end of month, I reset the day counter back to 1.

doy = 1
month = 1
day = 1

dates = []
while month < 13
  dates << Date.new(month, day, doy)
  doy += 1
  if day < MONTH_LENGTHS[month - 1]
    day += 1
  else
    day = 1
    month += 1
  end
end

Now I had all the pieces I needed to conduct my investigation. I sorted my list by the absolute difference between the month-over-day and the day-of-year proportion:

sorted = dates.sort_by do |date|
  (date.monthOverDay - date.doyProportion).abs
end

Who do you think the winner was?

…

Spoilers ahead.

…

In Table 1, we have the top ten dates whose month-over-days are nearest to their day-of-year proportions.

date	day of year	month-over-day	day-of-year proportion	difference
1/19	19	0.0526	0.0521	0.0006
4/14	104	0.2857	0.2849	0.0008
8/13	225	0.6154	0.6164	0.0011
3/15	74	0.2000	0.2027	0.0027
2/16	47	0.1250	0.1288	0.0038
1/20	20	0.0500	0.0548	0.0048
1/18	18	0.0556	0.0493	0.0062
7/13	194	0.5385	0.5315	0.0070
2/15	46	0.1333	0.1260	0.0073
9/13	256	0.6923	0.7014	0.0091

Table 1. The ten dates of a non-leap year whose rational numbers are nearest.

Congratulations, January 19! Adding in the leap day changes this list very little.

Which dates do you think had the largest differences between their two rational numbers? You don’t really need a program to tell you the answers, which are shown in Table 2.

date	day of year	month-over-day	day-of-year proportion	difference
11/2	306	5.5	0.8384	4.6616
5/1	121	5.0	0.3315	4.6685
12/2	336	6.0	0.9205	5.0795
6/1	152	6.0	0.4164	5.5836
7/1	182	7.0	0.4986	6.5014
8/1	213	8.0	0.5836	7.4164
9/1	244	9.0	0.6685	8.3315
10/1	274	10.0	0.7507	9.2493
11/1	305	11.0	0.8356	10.1644
12/1	335	12.0	0.9178	11.0822

Table 2. The ten dates of a non-leap year whose rational numbers are farthest apart.

Congratulations, December 1!

America is one of the few countries that places months before days in dates. Sometimes the month-day-year ordering is called middle-endian ordering. Many more countries use little-endian ordering. They would say that today is 28/4.

Let’s examine figure out which dates are closest in little-endian ordering. We make just a slight change to our sorting criteria to consider the day-over-month rather than the month-over-day:

sorted = dates.sort_by do |date|
  (date.dayOverMonth - date.doyProportion).abs
end

The dates whose rational numbers are nearest are shown in Table 3.

date	day of year	day-over-month	day-of-year proportion	difference
1/4	91	0.2500	0.2493	0.0007
6/9	249	0.6667	0.6822	0.0155
11/12	345	0.9167	0.9452	0.0285
8/10	281	0.8000	0.7699	0.0301
5/8	217	0.6250	0.5945	0.0305
9/11	313	0.8182	0.8575	0.0394
10/11	314	0.9091	0.8603	0.0488
12/12	346	1.0000	0.9479	0.0521
4/7	185	0.5714	0.5068	0.0646
2/5	122	0.4000	0.3342	0.0658

Table 3. The ten dates whose rational numbers are nearest in little-endian ordering.

Congratulations, 1 April!

Once again, can you guess which dates are at the bottom of this list? You can, if you believe in yourself. The answers are shown in Table 4.

date	day of year	day-over-month	day-of-year proportion	difference
22/1	22	22.0	0.0603	21.9397
23/1	23	23.0	0.063	22.937
24/1	24	24.0	0.0658	23.9342
25/1	25	25.0	0.0685	24.9315
26/1	26	26.0	0.0712	25.9288
27/1	27	27.0	0.074	26.926
28/1	28	28.0	0.0767	27.9233
29/1	29	29.0	0.0795	28.9205
30/1	30	30.0	0.0822	29.9178
31/1	31	31.0	0.0849	30.9151

Table 4. The ten dates whose rational numbers are farthest apart in little-endian ordering.

Congratulations, 31 January!

I am satisfied with the outcome of my investigation. I now have four new holidays to celebrate.