Quick little mini game (math and b-day related)

As of 7:24 AM CDT, I am 27 years old today. I was born in the same time zone. So what time was I born?

First right answer gets–what do I have–how about a digital copy of the original sequel book to Star Trek IV before it was completely rewritten by someone else? It will never be published.

Yeah, it’s a bit immature, but I come bearing gift, so don’t be upset at my stealth announcement! :slight_smile:

6:24 AM CST? The Daylight Saving time change rules were altered recently to make the switch from April to March.

Since you mention CDT, I’m imagining even if you were born in one of those funky Indiana towns/counties that wanted to switch between Eastern/Central, you took that into account.

It’s a bit more complicated than that. But you do have all the information you need. When I say the same time zone, I mean I was born less than 100 miles north of my current location in Arkansas.

But I’m glad you posted, because I did make an error. That should be 9:24 AM CDT. (And, no, the answer is not 8:24 AM).

BTW: Show your work, and if it’s right and it turns out I was wrong when I did the math, and I’ll count it right anyway.

Oops, I keep forgetting to bump this. Figure I ought to at least give the late night crowd a shot.

And I’ll give the largest hint I can: There are certain people who have trouble figuring out their birthday the majority of the time. Think about how they figure out when to celebrate.

OK, you turned 27 at 8:24 AM CST on 16Mar2012. That’s 14:24 GMT, for a Julian day of 2456003.1 . A year is 365.242199 days, so 27 years is 9861.53937 days. Subtract that from the JD earlier, and we get that you were born at JD 2446141.56 . Converting back to calendar dates, we get 1:26:24 GMT on 17Mar1985, or 19:26:24 CST on 16Mar1985.

Bravo! I admit, I didn’t use Julian days when I did it, but it works. All I did was subtract the actual days in 27 years from the calendar days, multiply by 24, and then convert to degrees-minutes-seconds. I used Google to get the number of hours in a year and divided by 24, so I didn’t have to worry about whether the days were 24 hours or not. So 24((27(365) + 7) - 27(8765.81277/24)) = 11.05521 = 11:03:18.756. Add that to 8:24 CST, and you get 7:27 PM. Yeah, a minute off, but that’s probably due to rounding.

Incidentally, I was actually born at 7:36 PM. I don’t know where I lost 9-10 minutes. But, like I said, if the math is right, I don’t care if I screwed up.

As my hint implies, I got the idea to do this from Cecil’s column on when leap year babies celebrate their birthdays, where he said that most of us celebrated our birthdays at the wrong time. Someone linked that column in a thread, and I thought it pretty cool. I was sure that some website out there would do it for me, but I couldn’t find one. So I did it myself. I was expecting the result to be around 1:30 PM or so (from subtracting a fourth of a day), so when I realized I already missed it, I decided to post it on the board to check my math, calling it a game to make it more fun. The prize was a last minute addition, being one of the few digital things I own that is unique.

So, anyways, you have your email address in your profile, so I’ll send you the story there, unless you contact me and tell me to send it somewhere else. I’ll shoot you a PM and wait a day or so.

Thanks for making this not an entire waste of time. I was a bit surprised that none of the math people jumped on this, even if they didn’t want the prize. Maybe it was too easy.

Huh, I thought that the prize was meant facetiously. But yeah, the address in my profile is correct.