SANTA'S MATH
Imagine you are the jolly guy up North. You have about a gazillion stops to make on Christmas eve and a whole lot of logistical stuff to deal with every other day of the year. This calls for planning well in advance so you need to know exactly what day of the week Christmas will fall on in future years to adjust your lead times.
Ho-ho-ho, simple! Assuming we continue to stick to the Gregorian calendar, you can apply a little math and figure it all out far ahead of time.
First, write down the year you're interested in. For simplicity's sake, let's use 2002. Split the number into its century C (20) and its year Y (2).
Divide century C by 4 and round it to a whole number -- call it K. In this case, K = 20 divided by 4 and we get 5 with nothing left over. Do the same for Y, giving a new figure, G = 2 divided by 4 = 0.5, which we'll round off to zero.
Now, figure the value of D -- for day of the week -- using the formula: D = 50 + Y + K + G - (2 x Y), so in this case, D = 50 + 2 + 5 + 0 - 4. Or, D = 53.
To work out the day of the week, divide D by 7 and write down the remainder, R. If R = 0, make it Sunday. If R = 1, it's Monday, and so on through R = 6 for Saturday.
So, in 2002 Christmas Day is figured as 53 divided by 7 = 7 with a remainder of 3, or Wednesday. Cool, eh?
Now if we could just write a story with enough elves, reindeer and so forth to fill in the numbers we'd have a water-cooler phenomenon on our hands.
Do you have an idea for holiday math? Be sure to let us know. We will publish the best and you might become famous -- for a minute or two.
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