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If you're like me, you can't quickly remember how many days are in October or April. However, there is a simple trick to determining how many days are in each month, and it doesn't involve any complex calculations. In fact, the only things involved are carried with you 24 hours a day (except, of course, if for some reason, you no longer have your original hands); your knuckles.
The trick goes as such:
1) Make your hands into fists
2) Hold your fists together so that your thumbs and (curled) index fingers are touching.
3) Now, count both the knuckles and valleys between them as months (i.e. count the first knuckle as January, the adjoining valley as February, and so on). The orientation of the counting makes no difference, so those that prefer to think in a Hebrew mentality can count from right to left and still get the desired effect.
4) Now for the important part of the trick: Each month that was counted on a knuckle has 31 days, and each month that was counted in a valley has fewer than 31 days (well, 80% of them have 30. The remaining month has 28 (or 29) days. Figuring out which is the odd one out will be an exercise left to the reader.
NOTE: this is "stupid as hell" (in the opinion of some people, but widely taught and practiced by others).
Some history: at the time I wrote lemmata for the various astronomical months; they were later consolidated into this general "month" page. So my elaborations on approximations for days-per-month and months-per-year ended up here. My emphasis has been on continued fractions, because those are successive optimal approximations. They are a standard against whih accuracy of calendars can be assessed. I object to inserting other approximations into the current lists because the context (though admittedly not the title) is all about continued fractions. Instead, I endorse adding another list of approximations actually used. Other examples: Egyptians used 9125/309 days (equal to 25 "wandering years" of always 365 days); the fixed islamic calendar uses 10631/360 days. I am doubtful that the Coligny calendar has been reconstructed with sufficient confidence to fix a mean lunation length. Tom Peters 23:59, 3 October 2005 (UTC)
The longer period of 30 years is certainly likely, and dropping one intercalary month each 30 years gives a much better approximation. This does not however follow directly from the Coligny calendar, which is why, being conservative, I did not include it. As it stands, the Coligny Calender does indeed have 62 lunations and 5 years - that is the undisputed fact of the actual bronze tablet. The 30 year period is from Pliny the Elder, and would make the use of the Coligny Calendar more accurate: (62*6 - 1)/ 5*6 = 12.367
Its a pity that your dedication to a particular mathematical theorem drives you to exclude historical calendars that don't follow it. I reiterate that the topic of the page is months. All months are, therefore, on topic and mathematicalcuriosities are only of value where they happen to illustrate the primary topic. That way, and far less confusingly, all the approximations listed would relate to actual calendars;currently, ther eis a list of approximations that relates to a pet theory, some of which were not used by any calendar , and attempts to add actual calendrical approximations are deleted. The accuracy of approximations can be more conveniently given in parts per million, or in days drift per millenium, or whatever units. -- Nantonos 16:14, 23 October 2005 (UTC)
Ok, I've done the first part of this. Check out lunisolar calendar. I have removed some of the wording which seemed to indicate all lunisolar calendars are arithmetical — which is clearly not the case. To Tom Peters: please see Talk:Lunisolar calendar wrt the changes I have made to the fraction list. squell 00:30, 29 October 2005 (UTC)
that section is pointless, considering the fact that there is already a section for many specific calenders. Instead of it, a link should be added to the specific calenders section.
I would have done this myself, except that I am very clumsy with the site (seeing as I've edited for the first time today) and before deletion, people who know more than me about all of the topics presented in the section should check whether information that appears there is missing in the entries for the specific topics. I've already noticed that the alternate endings of the mnemonic for the memorisation of the length of months did not appear in the entry about the gregorian calender, so I added them to the appropriate section there. I probably missed some things, however.
I've tried searching for a similar article to "Days of the Week" for the "Months of the year." Would someone be able to create that page? Read this article to find out what I mean: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Days_of_the_week
Unlike Days of the Week, Months of the Year depend upon the calendar system in use. Consequently the information would be found on the pages about the particular calendar system, such as Gregorian calendar, Hebrew Calendar, Islamic Calendar , Coptic Calendar, French Republican Calendar and others in Category:Specific calendars.
Karl 8 September 2006 08:00 UT
What was synodic month length in 3009BCE? Can it be calculated mathematicaly?
Invocation 6x6=66 is derived from satanic origin, because this invocation is derived from fictitious assumption that is 6*6=66, or two sixes side by side: 6*6, that is rougly similar to 666. This is placed in Polish satanic book called "Agent Dołu" or in English "Pit's Agent": [1] Thus much better solution would be using septenary or at least decimal units for measuring time. For example 343 day year (nearly the same as draconic year) would be divided into 7 seasons and each season into 7 weeks. More about full septimalization of all units here: [2]
Comprehensive proof of evilness of these unholy numbers such as 6,60,90,180,270,360,666,3600,6666, which refuses to be completed up to multiples of holy seven is placed here: [3] 83.19.52.107 09:52, 15 March 2007 (UTC)
althought heavily tied to the northern hemisphere there's a lot deal of symbolic meaning tied to each month... Anyone with precise knowledge on this matter could enhance the article please? Undead Herle King 02:59, 1 June 2007 (UTC)
Ok I am like thus too much Jujharsingh 029 ( talk) 06:15, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
Ok good luck Jujharsingh 029 ( talk) 06:15, 26 June 2015 (UTC)
How did the Icelandic calendar work? I get the impression that they agreed with the rest of the Western world on the days of teh week, that is, a Sunday in Iceland was always a Sunday in Europe. So, how did they maintain the correspondance of dates and days of teh week? Was there a "leap week" or some sort added on a regular basis? I'd once created a fictional calendar that worked that same way, so I'm quite interested to see that a real calendar apparently did the same Nik42 00:00, 3 July 2007 (UTC)
Note: Years are 365.2425 days, not 365.25
Will Entriken ( talk) 04:21, 16 January 2008 (UTC)
Has anyone ever noticed if you write down the first letters in the list of months you see JASON? JFMAMJ(JASON)D. Is that something or just a coincidence? 76.68.110.116 ( talk) 20:57, 20 August 2008 (UTC)
In the table of lengths of lunar months, the correction factor variable Y is described as days since the epoch. In the text Y is described as years. Which is it?-- agr ( talk) 16:35, 18 May 2011 (UTC)
Who uses the "Arabic calendar" (recently added)? Most of the month names resemble the Hebrew; are they used by Israeli Arabs perhaps? (If so, the sections ought to be merged.) — Tamfang ( talk) 08:55, 19 June 2011 (UTC)
I still remember the mnemonic my high school Latin teacher taught us for remembering which months have the ides on the 15th and the calends on the 7th: MOM & July. HankW512 ( talk) 23:10, 29 April 2013 (UTC)
P.S.: Is anyone aware of a mnemonic device for remembering that the leap years in the Hebrew calendar are the 3rd, 6th, 8th, 11th, 14th, 17th and 19th years of each Metonic cycle?
The draconic month is stated here 27.212220817. There should be said, that it is an average value, where actual time distances between ascending node passages (relative to dynamic ecliptic plane) are currently (this year) in range 27.05644 - 27.3645 days (the difference is over 7 hours), varying on a sinusoide with 173.3 day period, as detected from NASA/JPL ephemerides DE422. Similar variability (173 day sinusoide) shows the angle between angular momentum vector (orbit axis) of Moon orbit relative to Earth and of angular momentum vector of EMB orbit relative to Sun (on range 5.0328° - 5.30428°). The angular frequency of rotation of a vector from EMB to Moon Ascending Node ranges from 1.6e-5° to 3.21° per 27 days (the low bound could be probably an artifact of discrete position of ascending node calculation? But probably it is not...). I found no mention of the variability of Moon precession here...?! There should be at least the word average draconic month... P.A.Semi 79.98.159.114 ( talk) 22:35, 18 October 2013 (UTC)
It is clear that the names in both of these calendars are cognates. The Khmer section has little information apart from the list of months, but perhaps some linkage between the two sections, either overtly in a list format or simply by putting them back to back, would shed light on their relevant cultural and linguistic connections. 64.134.179.205 ( talk) 17:32, 14 January 2014 (UTC)Tom in Florida
The keyboard wasn't invented according to month lengths. F doesn't correlate to January. The key has no special position in music. Using knuckles is a stupid method to remember the months. I never understood this. The length alternates between long and short, with an exception between July and August. Who needs to put their knuckles together to count? After some years of use, children automatically know how many days each month has. We use the calendar everyday, it should be clear to everyone. Besides, you have more knuckles and between the knuckles than months. Children might get confused more than just remembering by heart. February may be a short month, but you can't see from the knuckles that it has only 28 instead of 30 days. Another confusion arises when you put both hands together: Children could count the space between the two index fingers as August, making it a short month. -- 2.245.178.152 ( talk) 13:02, 13 August 2015 (UTC)
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An anonymous username, not my real name
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In the Khmer solar calendar, two-thirds of the etyma shown under "Meanings" appear to be unrelated to the words that they purport to explain. Some explanation of this phenomenon would be in order. — Tamfang ( talk) 21:55, 3 July 2023 (UTC)