Katrina Fox

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Luigi’s breakthrough was to keep the standard every-fourth-year leap year of the Julian calendar but to take out three leap days every four hundred years. Leap years were all the years divisible by four, and all Luigi suggested was to remove the leap days from years which were also a multiple of 100 (except those that were also a multiple of 400). This now averages out to 365.2425 days per year; impressively close to the desired tropical year of around 365.2422 days. Despite it being a mathematically better calendar, because this new system was born out of Catholic holidays and promulgated by ...more
Humble Pi: When Math Goes Wrong in the Real World
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