[LEAPSECS] LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 88, Issue 31

Joseph M Gwinn gwinn at raytheon.com
Tue Jan 14 18:36:36 EST 2014



The problem was religious - nobody was going to have Christ born in the
year zero.




From: "Poul-Henning Kamp" <phk at phk.freebsd.dk>
To: Leap Second Discussion List <leapsecs at leapsecond.com>, "Gerard
Ashton" <ashtongj at comcast.net>
Date: 01/14/2014 06:29 PM
Subject: Re: [LEAPSECS] LEAPSECS Digest, Vol 88, Issue 31
Sent by: leapsecs-bounces at leapsecond.com



In message <000301cf117f$cb7b7be0$627273a0$@comcast.net>, "Gerard Ashton"
write
s:


>no authority is in a position to demand that December

>31, 2000, be regarded as the last day of the 20th century.


I do belive mathematicians have done a fair bit of work on counting,
and that they are entitled to deference in this particular case.

It follows rather trivially from the fact that there were no
year zero, that the first century must contain the years [1...100] in
order to be a century.

Proof by induction will then lead you to the fact that century
number N contains the years [N*100-99, N*100]

Consequently the 20th century must be the years [1901...2000]

Q.E.D.

--
Poul-Henning Kamp | UNIX since Zilog Zeus 3.20
phk at FreeBSD.ORG | TCP/IP since RFC 956
FreeBSD committer | BSD since 4.3-tahoe
Never attribute to malice what can adequately be explained by incompetence.
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