One of my pet peeves is when a professor gives handouts, but they are sloppily arranged or difficult to make out. I understand that they have busy lives; at the very least the syllabus should be clear. Anyway, one of my hobbies is formatting documents and organizing information. It may not even matter what the information it is that I'm organizing. For example, I have a catalog of the video game systems I have and many of the games. Perhaps it is destiny that I should be a librarian one day.
Now, to the topic at hand: since I care so much about formatting, my college lecture notes are also formatted. Class title, date and type of notes are usually what I indicate in the header. One thing that I like to do, if I can, is make a simple equation out of the numbers of that date. Today is a good example: 1-13-14 becomes 1+13=14. It is a small thing, with no relation to the topic at hand (which is usually literature of some kind or psychology) but it got me thinking: How many ways can I create these equations? For that matter, how many can I make? Finally, an excuse to be able to write a math-related article!
Before I begin, I must establish some parameters. One is that I am using a simple format: MM-DD-YY, as I would write in a date for notes. It is good to limit the year to two digits, as YYY and YYYY would seem to complicate matters (They don't add as many numbers as it would seem: one is still limited to a maximum of 12 * 31 as the highest multiplicative operation. However, I have no need to write out 2013 or 2014 as I am fairly confident that I have no written notes from 1914.) Results too must be limited: for the sake of simplicity I won't use operations that result in negative numbers or fractions.
Oh yes, I cannot forget: I am also staying within the years AD. BC/BCE goes back too far, and to a over-contested beginning date. 2014 years is still a lot of years.
Even with these four limits in place, there is still a great deal that one can do. First, one can look at the four basic operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication and division. Then, one can consider exponents.
I began by making a table to determine the lowest and highest possible combinations for each of the five operations. Multiplication and exponentiation were a little bit more complicated: the former had a separate category for highest possible month and highest possible year, while there were several highest possible exponents for the latter. It too featured a month-year dichotomy.
At this point, I must pause from writing for the compiling of tables and research. After all, could not there be an equation to figure out the number of "operative dates" within the last 2014 years? Alas, I do not have the ability to formulate such a thing.
To conclude, I found that there were approximately 28 operative dates for 2014. Most months only had two. (Reading back, I must make a confession: I had to allow for negative results, as in 3-15-12.)
What does this mean for you, the reader? I'm not sure, actually. I just wanted to work some of these out myself. And, I haven't posted an article in so long. So! Be inspired! If I can find a fun little math problem to work out, then so can you!
