An Important Birthday, and Related Trivia

      This daughter attains double-nickels status today!  Happy birthday, Ivanelle.

Ivy shares her birthday with any number of famous or widely-known people, as we all do.  Some who were born on August 18 are

Virginia Dare, 1587, famously the first English child born in the Americas.

Shelley Winters, 1920, well-known actress, now departed.

Rosalynn Carter, 1927, former First Lady.

Robert Redford, 1936, American actor and one-time heartthrob of every housewife. (I am told.)

Timothy Geithner, 1961, recently Secretary of the Treasury of the United States.

Are you aware of the fact that in any randomly chosen group of 23 people there is a 50-50 chance that two of them will have the same birthday?  The odds in favor of such a pairing increases as the number of people in the group increases, and at 70 people there is a mere one chance in a thousand that there won’t be such a match.

Thoughts on a New Year

One should have been sleeping, but this one was lying abed between the wee hours and dawn, wide awake and no prospect of getting back to sleep.

I would not count sheep; don't like mutton, and Mary can darn well keep her little lamb.  Instead, I thought about the impending 2013 on the calendar, and I realized that I had not yet factored the number.

2013 will not be a prime year.

3 x 11 x 61 = 2013

and thus the factors of 2013 are 1,3,11,33,61,183,671, and 2013.  I don't see anything in there that bodes particular good favor.  But then I don't generally put much stock in numerology.*

Finally, the restless night passes, the sun rises and another cold day in the Midwest is in prospect.

The morning news seems to indicate only  that 2013 will begin as 2012 ends, cold.  A glance at the calendar tells us that February has lost its "extra" day and is back to its truncated truncated state.

Flipping forward we find that once again July will follow June.

Then 365 days from now we will be looking 2014 in the eye.   Should we  live so long.  It won't be prime, either.

*Arithmetic, on the other hand, I believe in.

November 8, 2012

The calendar notation said that this is day number 313 in the year 2012.   Yes, the first thing that came to mind is depicted above.  313 is Donald Duck's license plate number.

Then one observes that 313 is a simple palindrome; and the next step is to factor the number, which is a mental exercise that I have practiced for a long time:  factoring license numbers.  A quick calculation reveals that the number is prime.

There.  Fun, arithmetic lesson, and more of the you-never-know-what-you-will-get on STSTT.

Image: Disney