Is this a better way of remembering the number of days in a month?
You are probably familiar with the rhyme that begins Thirty days has September. How about this instead: Before August, odd numbered months have an odd number of days.
There is even a story that goes with this. It has no factual basis, but it fits in nicely with the calendar. According to the story, the Romans, logical thinkers that they were, set up the calendar so that all odd numbered months had 31 (an odd number) days and all even numbered months had 30 days, except for February, which only had 30 days in leap years and 29 days otherwise. The problem started when August was named for Augustus Caesar. He felt resentful that Julius Caesar’s month, July, had 31 days but his month only had 30. He ordered that a day be moved from February to August and all the months after August be rearranged so they would still alternate months with 30 and 31 days.
I was reminded of this by xkcd’s comic for today The character would find it easier to just have to think that since October comes after August, the month’s even numbered parity of 10 is the opposite of its odd numbered day parity of 31.
Observing members:
0
Composing members:
0
12 Answers
Yes, I agree. I usually use my knuckles, though, like I was taught in primary school.
Oh, cool! Now come here and I’l show you something else you can use knuckles for
I have always used my knuckles as well. Just cuz it’s funner.
Are you right or left knucklebrained?
I just look it up in a calendar.
There is a really good system for determining the day of the week for a given date, devised by the mathematician John Conway. The following days fall on the same day of the week: the last day of February, 4/4 (April 4), 6/6, 8/8, 10/10 and 12/12. If this is all you remember, you can work with odd numbered months by starting with an adjacent even numbered one.
Conway came up with rules for odd numbered months, but I don’t think they are worth the effort required to remember them. I prefer the mnemonic someone else came up with of “working 9 to 5 at the 7–11”. This tells you that the reference day of the week that applies to the even months also applies to 5/9, 9/5, 7/11 and 11/7. January is easy because January 31 is on the same day of the week as February 28 and March 1 falls on the day after the last day in February.
October started out as the eighth month (Octo) so when did it pick up a third first day? Same with December, which used to be the tenth month.
That’s the problem with Roman numerals; it is hard to divide X by II.
The roots of the words September, October, November and December are actually the numbers seven, eight, nine and ten, but today they are the ninth, tenth, eleventh and twelfth months, respectively. What I learned was that the months got shifted by two months when the Romans added July and August (for Julius and Augustus) and rearranged the number of days in each month.
And don’t buy oysters in any month without an R….
Sorry. My mind wandered.
Knuckles work fine.
Answer this question 
Composing members:
0
