I love this thread! Sorry if this is a bit off-topic. In astronomical terms, the anniversary of your birth occurs when the earth is in the same orbital position as it was at the instant when you popped out of the womb.
The true length of the year is 365.2425 days to the nearest 1/10,000th of a day (8.64 seconds). [365 days per non-leap year, plus one day every 4 years(+1/4) for leap years e.g. 2008, minus one day every century which is not a leap year e.g. 1900 (-1/100), plus one day every 400 years, which IS a leap year e.g. 2000(+1/400)]. One interesting aspect of this is that if you were born just after midnight any day that is less than one year before a Feb. 29, the anniversary of your birth will ALWAYS occur at least one day before your birthday! I've attached a little external form (v7.6 or v8) which acts as a correction calculator. It gives the number of hours difference between your recorded time of birth and the actual time of the solar anniversary. For example, if you were born on November 7, 1971, the calculator shows a correction of negative 24.66 hours for your birthday in 2008. That means that if your recorded time of birth was 12:30 AM, then the actual anniversary of your birth is on November 5th this year! Here's the command file with settings for the form: CLEAR ALL VARIABLES SET QUOTES = ' SET NULL ' ' SET DATE FOR DD MMM YYYY SET DATE SEQ ddmmyy SET DATE CENTURY 19 SET DATE YEAR 25 SET ZERO ON SET V vBirthDate DATE=NULL SET V vYear INTEGER=NULL SET V vCorrection REAL=NULL REFF Birthday.RFF In case attachments aren't permitted, here is the essential calculation, where vYear is the birthday year in question (e.g. 2008) and vBirthDate is your DOB (dd mm yy) Correction (hours to the nearest 0.01) = (ROUND((((.vYear-IYR4(.vBirthdate))*365.2425)-(RDATE(IMON(.vBirthdate),IDAY( .vBirthdate),.vYear)-.vBirthdate))*24,2)) Regards, Stephen Markson ForenSys The Forensic Systems Group www.ForenSys.ca 416 512 6950 > -----Original Message----- > From: [email protected] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Dennis > McGrath > Sent: November 7, 2008 3:07 PM > To: RBASE-L Mailing List > Subject: [RBASE-L] - RE: Calculating a persons age. > > Razzak, > > Thanks. That's a nice function, I had forgotten about it. > > The true age calculation is still hard to get perfect. > Feb 28th and 29th are the same day for birthday calculations. > (or feb 29th and March 1st are the same) > I you are born on Feb 28th how old are you on the 28th and 29th of a leap > year? Or if you are born on the 29th then are you one year old on Feb > 28th or March 1st of the next year? Good fodder for a discussion! > > Dennis
