[HN Gopher] 13 Months: The Kodak Calendar Experiment
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13 Months: The Kodak Calendar Experiment
Author : twunde
Score : 53 points
Date : 2022-08-26 17:54 UTC (5 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (theinternetsaysitstrue.com)
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| jackcarter wrote:
| "A hotel that did a business of $10,000 per week in room sales
| found that its receipts from room sales were less in May than
| those in April. It looked as if the business was dropping off.
| May was one day longer than April and yet its room sales were
| less. The figures, however, proved to be very misleading. As a
| matter of fact business was actually better in May than in April
| - ten dollars a day better - but the monthly comparison seemed to
| show that it was worse."
|
| So revenue/day was up in May, and there are more days in May, but
| total revenue was down in May? What's the explanation?
| nickff wrote:
| I suspect that there were more weekend days in May, though it's
| only a guess.
| samwillis wrote:
| I would assume the alignment of the months to the days of the
| week. Assuming they make more at the weekend, if May had a one
| more weekend then April (I think that's possible) then it would
| have greater revenue.
|
| The Kodak calendar fixes that as all months have four weekends.
| discreditable wrote:
| Reminds me of one of my favorite posts from back in 2013: You
| advocate a ____ approach to calendar reform:
| https://qntm.org/calendar
|
| Specifically (omitting a lot for brevity) : You
| advocate a ( ) solar ( ) lunar (x) lunisolar
| approach to calendar reform. Your idea will not work. Here is
| why: (x) solar years are real and the calendar year
| needs to sync with them (x) solar days are real and the
| calendar day needs to sync with them (x) the solar year
| cannot be evenly divided into solar days (x) having one
| or two days per year which are part of no month is stupid
| (x) your name for the thirteenth month is questionable
| (x) the solar year cannot be evenly divided into seven-day weeks
| Specifically, your plan fails to account for: (x)
| rational hatred for arbitrary change (x) unpopularity of
| weird new month and day names and the following
| philosophical objections may also apply: (x) good
| luck trying to move the Fourth of July (x) the history of
| calendar reform is insanely complicated and no amount of further
| calendar reform can make it simpler Furthermore,
| this is what I think about you: (x) sorry, but I
| don't think it would work
| jonathankoren wrote:
| Be glad La Terreur is over.
|
| Today is nonidi 9 Fructidor in the year of the Republic CCXXX,
| celebrating liquorice, you churlish counter revolutionary!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/French_Republican_calendar
|
| Twitter bot that tells you day
| https://twitter.com/sansculotides
| gerikson wrote:
| The revolutionary calendar is separate from the Terror. In
| fact, it survived it by quite some time, being abolished by
| Napoleon in An XII.
| twunde wrote:
| My god. I literally had the argument from
| https://qntm.org/abolish during standup.
| charlieyu1 wrote:
| Lunisolar calendar is used by Asians for centuries.
| bombcar wrote:
| > having one or two days per year which are part of no month is
| stupid
|
| This is perhaps the weakest of the objections, it has been done
| and it could be doable, if we wanted it.
|
| But nobody really cares.
| elmomle wrote:
| It would be better to make it a special month. Nicer for
| people born on those days than being born on the Unmonth.
| 867-5309 wrote:
| >the Unmonth
|
| like the Giliacs!
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Orville_(season_2)#ep17
| function_seven wrote:
| Nah. "My birthday transcends your small-minded definition
| of 'months'. I was born outside of time. I'm above it."
|
| Excel would throw a fit, but I propose that numeric date
| formats handle these unmonthed days as follows:
|
| US-en: __/01/1989, GB-en: 01-__-1989, ISOish: 1989-01-__
|
| That Javascript format: Blessed ___ 01 1989 15:42:03
| GMT-0800 (Pacific Standard Time)
| roussanoff wrote:
| Interesting how the 1920s seem to be an era of social management
| experiments everywhere, with basic things like calendar being
| questioned all over the world. Just a few years later after
| Eastman's push for a reform in the United States, the Soviet
| Union actually changed its calendar. The reform affected the
| definition of a week rather than the month. The reform was not
| successful, and the changes were only in place in 1929-1931.
|
| My grandfather, who turned 10 in 1929, vaguely recalled how the
| country briefly abandoned universal weekends, which meant a mess
| scheduling anything family-related. Everyone had different work
| schedules. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Soviet_calendar
| rjhermens wrote:
| It seems like several companies have adopted something similar
| without trying to change the months. Take for example Intel's
| calendar where the manufacturing process follows a weekly
| calendar - their dates are represented by a year, a work-week
| number, and a day number[0]. They even make their suppliers use
| their calendar.
|
| [0]:
| https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/supplier/resources/m...
| spiderice wrote:
| I don't fully understand the day number part of the linked
| document. If I want to say July 12th, 2021 in Intels weekly
| calendar, do I write:
|
| 2021-29-12 (29th week of the year, 12th day of the month)
|
| Or do I write:
|
| 2021-29-02 (29th week of the year, second day of the week)
|
| The linked PDF makes it seem like the former. But the latter
| makes more sense in my head because it doesn't rely on months
| (which is seemingly the whole point)
| kwhitefoot wrote:
| Doesn't everyone use ISO weeks now?
| quercusa wrote:
| Intel's calendar works pretty well for planning. ISO 8601 [0]
| defines a week-date system but Intel doesn't follow it.
|
| There's a Google Calendar setting "Show week numbers" that will
| show the ISO workweeks in the little month calendar at top
| left.
|
| [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_week_date
| mortenjorck wrote:
| The calendars on MacOS and iOS also have a toggle (under
| advanced settings) to display week numbers.
|
| The low-key success of week-number calendars points to what I
| think was the big reason the Comte calendar never took off:
| Months are, unless you're working in a maritime environment,
| an unnecessary intermediary unit of measure, and for most are
| only valuable for their legacy cultural references.
| _Redefining_ them should have been a non-starter.
|
| A week-number calendar is great because it's simpler than
| trying to retrofit a year-month-day structure, yet still
| allows legacy Gregorian months to be seamlessly overlaid on
| it. The Intel PDF is a great example of this.
| every wrote:
| There are industries that employ 13 period accounting. I
| encountered it in the bar and restaurant sector. Weeks are
| accurate, repetitive measures for them. Months and quarters are
| too variable to be of much use. However the practice does make
| for a lot of adjusting entries, prepaids and accruals to align
| with the actual calendar and billing cycles. Somewhat of a
| pain...
| cutler wrote:
| Any calendar which doesn't reference the fact that there are 12
| lunations in a year is missing the point. Ok 12 & 1/3 but still
| closer to 12 than 13.
| samwillis wrote:
| But lunations are, as far as I can see, irrelevant to 99.99% of
| human beings. There is no reason a modern calendar has to align
| with what the Moon is doing.
|
| Why do you think a calendar should be aligned (sort of) to
| them?
| svachalek wrote:
| I encounter this in UI/UX all the time. You can think of ways to
| make things easier for people who haven't learned it yet, but in
| the process it makes things difficult for the people who already
| learned it, because they need to learn something over again and
| also unlearn what they already learned. And in many situations,
| most people who need to learn it already have.
|
| In short, no one will approve something like this calendar change
| unless only 5 year olds get to vote.
| jrjarrett wrote:
| I worked at Kodak in Financial Information Systems, and 1989 was
| spent getting ready to convert all of the batch jobs from 13
| periods with 28 cycles to monthly.
|
| Lots of figuring out when to run things... I had that exact
| poster up on my wall in my cube that's shown in the article.
|
| Good times, good times.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| The triangular earth calendar is my favorite
| https://calendars.fandom.com/wiki/Triangular_Earth_Calendar
|
| TEC has many unique properties. It breaks down into many
| mathematical models. One week can be divided into whole days by
| 2, 3, and 6. They can be divided by 4 as well, with half days.
| One month can similarly be divided into weeks. One month can be
| divided into whole days by 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 12, and 18. The 60 week
| year, not counting the last week, can be divided evenly by 2, 3,
| 4, 6, 12, 15, and 30.
|
| Triangular Earth Calendar is named so because of its triangular
| properties. Unlike most calendars which are viewed only on a
| square grid, TEC is viewed in its most natural form, the
| triangle. The following are representations of TEC in triangular
| form:
|
| Here is the view of a single week. 1 2 3
|
| 4 5 6 That is the same for weeks in a month. Here is the view of
| days in a month (using single numbers only). 1
| 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
| 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 0 1 2 3 4 5 6
|
| Here is the same view, but with days and weeks in a month. Each
| number is a day, each small triangle is a week, the entire is a
| month. 1 2 3 4 5 6 1 1
| 2 3 2 3 4 5 6 4 5 6 1 1 1 2 3
| 2 3 2 3 4 5 6 4 5 6 4 5 6
| bxparks wrote:
| Two small things I would love to see changed with the current
| calendar, but will never happen:
|
| * February deserves to have more days, so that every month has
| either 30 or 31 days. Taking away 1 day from August and January,
| and giving them to Feb would do it. In leap years, Feb can have
| 31 days.
|
| * The year ought to start on March 1st. So that September regains
| its place as the 7th month, October the 8th month, November the
| 9th month, and December the 10th month. Because that's what
| "Sept", "Oct", "Nov", and "Dec" mean.
| toast0 wrote:
| > The year ought to start on March 1st.
|
| In addition to making the number months make sense again, it
| would also make leap day at the end of the year (again), which
| probably also makes more sense.
|
| I think your point about February is probably good, but I don't
| know that pushing two changes is possible.
| mongol wrote:
| I have long thought that the uninterrupted series of 7-day weeks
| will be one of the hardest things to change that humanity has. I
| don't see how it can be done. It is so embedded in our culture. I
| think it will never happen as long as civilisations exist.
| twobitshifter wrote:
| It's sad because a 4/2 (6 day week) schedule would be great for
| people and not create a big difference in hours worked.
|
| Working 8.5 a day instead of 8, you'd get ~61x34=2074 hours of
| work per year
|
| Working typical 8 hour days is 2080 hours per year, so we miss
| only 6 hours, but have to work only 2/3rds of the days.
| shadowofneptune wrote:
| Messing with the definition of the week is always an issue I have
| with these calendars. An unending cycle of days is more useful
| than fixing the months to the week. The week-based calendars like
| https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/ISO_week_date are a better fit,
| though they clearly have more of an issue with seasonal drift.
| xd1936 wrote:
| I had an hour-long debate with coworkers about the International
| Fixed Calendar (Sol Calendar). There are so many benefits! I
| particularly like that every 1st of every month is a Sunday,
| every 2nd of every month is a Tuesday, etc. No more "What day or
| date does _____ holiday fall on _this_ year?"
| morsch wrote:
| What you're saying is apparently true for the International
| Fixed Calendar, but not the Sol Calendar. According to [1], the
| first (and second and third...) of every month in any given
| year is the same day of the week, but the mapping changes every
| year.
|
| [1] https://calendars.fandom.com/wiki/Sol_Calendar
| Svip wrote:
| > all the Pope Gregory the 13th did was account for leap years by
| adding in an extra day every few years to keep the year aligned
| with the astronomical year.
|
| The Julian calendar has leap days every four years. What Pope
| Gregory the 13th did was remove it from every 100th year (except
| those divided by 400, hence why 2000 was a leap year). Otherwise
| the difference between the Gregorian and Julian calendars would
| be far more than the 12-13 days they are now.
| pvitz wrote:
| Mexico is actually using a 28 days / 13 months convention for
| their interest rate swaps. However, I have no clue how that came
| to be.
| pg_bot wrote:
| If you're making a 13 month calendar, you have to rename all the
| months so that there is no ambiguity. If you plan an event for
| September 15th, it would be insane for people to have to ask the
| question "which September 15th"?
|
| Better yet, let's just get rid of months. They make no sense as a
| unit of time. There is no other measurement that can have
| multiple different values depending on the time of year. Imagine
| if the length of a meter varied, life would be madness.
| mongol wrote:
| Having the same weekday a specific day of each month sounds so
| boring. I like the variation with our current calendar. Sometimes
| your birthday is on a weekend, sometimes not, sometimes Christmas
| is on better or worse days than other years. Easter may be early
| or may be later. It makes the year more interesting.
| dwighttk wrote:
| Makes every month the same for easy accounting purposes...
| introduces 1.25 extra weird days the accountants still have to
| deal with somehow.
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