Math is hard. Apparently

[madbaker]

2010 is the start of a new year. It is not the start of a new decade. Nor was 2000 the start of a new millennium. You start a new cycle with year 1, not year 0.

To pre-empt the "If that's how people use it, it's correct" argument, I offer this riddle:

Q: "How many legs does a dog have if you call a tail a leg?"
A: "Four. Calling a tail a leg does not make it one."

What I'm reading: Ken Scholes, Canticle

Comments

Playing Devil's Advocate

[aimeric.livejournal.com]

(first, note that I agree that, under current definitions, the "1st decade of the 21st century" is 2001 - 2010)

Consider:
How many days are in a year? Depends on the year. In some cases, 365. In others, 366.

So how many years are in a decade? Why not define the 1st decade as 1-9 and everything else AD as xxx0 - xxx9?
(of course, the last decade BC is still 10 - 1 BC, so people will still complain).

Of course, a counter to this is that a year is defined the way it is to prevent the drifting of the seasons, because the earth does not circle the sun in an integral number of days. The constraint is therefore based on the physics. No such constraint exists with the definition of decade, and besides, "decade" means 10 (my counter to the last is that December isn't the 10th month anymore, either).

(Of course, I still want a Year 0, dammit! Then again, I might as well ask for a Jan 0 as well, while we're at it, which I suspect wouldn't go over so well)

And regarding your riddle, I have a LONG response to that, which I'll save for a separate post. (short response: I know the intent, but the phrasing is ambiguous in at least a couple of respects, so there are multiple possible answers. If you want a single answer, phrase the question unambiguously. Then again, I suspect that the point of posing the riddle is a presumption that there is only one correct interpretation, so that actually restating it unambiguously destroys its use as a riddle :) )

[madbaker.livejournal.com]

I want a Year 0 as well.