This October is very special. It has 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5
Sundays all in 1 month. This happens once in 823 years. These are known
as money bags. Pass this along to 8 good people and money will appear in
4 days based on the Chinese Feng Shui. Those who stop it will experience
none.
Well,I received this message over 4 days ago and no money appeared so far. I am sending it now to over 1,000 good people and will let you what comes. While we may not be able to predict the fortune, I think we can check whether this October is indeed as special as stated: Is it true that October that has 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays happens only once in 823 years? Seems suspiciously rare
See TheMathMom presentation:
Popular Puzzles
-
This is an easy puzzle that you all are welcome to share with your kids and friends: Put addition signs between the digits 88888888 to get ...
-
This puzzle arrived via email from one of the fans. Can you move just one match to make this statement correct? There is more than one sol... -
Here is a number magic trick that came to me via mail. All of you, math detectives, are invited to unveil its magic with your logic. Tak... -
This came in a magic trick box that our daughter picked for her birthday. Exhausted from all the Bar Mitzvah preparations for her older b... -
This came from my son who got it from someone else at school. I solved it quickly and texted him the answer just as I was getting into ... -
Magic squares are tables of numbers where sums of every row, every column and both diagonals produce the same number. No, they were not in... -
My daughter's school teacher is showing kids some number mysticism. She told them to take any 3 digit number, e.g.793. Scramble its digi... -
We are done with the winter Olympics and now are looking forward to the Oscar's entertainment. As we saw in the previous puzzle , t... -
I found this puzzle in a tiny but mighty pocket puzzle book named Optical Illusions. Suppose the yellow billiard ball strikes the bumper a... -
You have 42 parrots and 7 cages of various sizes. Lock all the parrots inside the cages so that no cage is empty and each cage contains an ...
9 comments:
Any October that starts on a Friday will have 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays. That should happen one October in 7.
Actually, the presence of Leap Year messes this up a bit, so it's not precisely every 7 years. In the first century of 2000 we have 2004, 2010, 2021, 2027, 2032, 2038, 2049, 2055, 2060, 2066, 2077, 2083, 2088, and 2094.
Can someone invite Kim for a meeting every Friday morning? She is solving all the puzzles and she is so good at them!
Kim, it looks like there is a pattern in your year list. Difference between the years is: 6,11,6,5,6,11,6,5,...
Why is this happening? Can you explain mathematically?
Actually, this last January had 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays. That alone should say that it doesn't just happen once in every 823 years - unless the wording is saying this happens in Oct but then again, Kim just proved that it happens more often than that =)
Got here late today, sorry. Yes, not that rare at all to have such a month if there are 31 days, as in Octobers. Happens again July 2011. A myth. Tom
The next time we have an October with 5 Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays will be in 2021. I went about it from a slightly different approach, assuming every time Oct. 31 occurs on a Sunday, there will be 5 complete weekends. I took into account the leap years in 2016 and 2020. So it happens approximately every 11 years or so....depending where leap years fall. :)
Sorry....actually just read Kim's and Maria's comments above. Don't know if I can explain mathematically the pattern mentioned above easily, but the 5 year intervals occur when a leap year immediately follows the year with the 5 weekends. The 6 year intervals occur when a leap year coincides with the year with the 5 weekends, and the 11 year intervals occur when a leap year occurs 2 years after the year with the 5 weekends.
The increment depends on the number of leap years between the 5-weekend Octobers. If there were no leap years, we'd move back one day each year, such that this would happen every 7 years. When there's one leap year in between, it happens every 6 years. But sometimes there are two Leap Years in between, and then we either get a 5 year interval, OR we find we skip over special 5-weekend October and then we end up with THREE Leap Years in between. So, we get either 6, 5 or 11 depending on the intervening Leap Years.
Very very interesting. A well-deserved point for Kim and bravissimo to everyone else who participated.
The money-bag prophecy verification is saying: "beep, beep. lie is detected."
Look for a new Halloween puzzle in the Friday newsletter.
Post a Comment
Note: Only a member of this blog may post a comment.