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Re: The Millennium




My calendar day doesn't usually start at 01:00. Why should the
Century.


But! your month DOES start with Day 1, and your year DOES start with Month 1.
By that argument, your century should start with Year 1.

To actually slip in something related to physics, I've often seen this same
difficulty come into play in labs involving counting periods. Many student
want to count "one" when they start the stopwatch, but then they stop it when
they count "ten", thinking they have timed ten periods when indeed they have
only timed nine.

I think the point to all this is that both methods of counting are "natural"
or "intuitive". Either can be reasonable depending on the situation. The
"official" interpretation is that the millennium ends with 2000, the
"popular" interpretation is that the millennium begins with 2000. I doubt our
arguments here will change either interpretation, so we may as well live with
both and move on to other topics.


Tim