Miscellaneous desk
< August 22	<< Jul \| August \| Sep >>	Current desk >

Welcome to the Wikipedia Miscellaneous Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

August 23

Symmetry of the Gregorian calendar

Is the Gregorian calendar "symmetric" around a year divisible by 400 (e.g. 2000)? To be precise, do the dominical letters for years on each side of such a year correspond as in the following table?

Symmetry
Dominical letter for 400k+n (e.g. 2000+n)	Dominical letter for 400k-n (e.g. 2000-n)
A	B
B	A
C	G
D	F
E	E
F	D
G	C
AG	CB
BA	BA
CB	AG
DC	GF
ED	FE
FE	ED
GF	DC

Note that the dominical letters E (for a common year starting on Wednesday) and BA (for a leap year starting on Saturday) "correspond" to themselves. For BA, it is clear that it corresponds to itself because it is the dominical letter of a year divisible by 400. For E, it corresponds to itself because it is the dominical letter for "midpoint" years like 1800 or 2200.

GeoffreyT2000 (talk) 00:40, 23 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It looks symmetric enough. Probably? Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 02:03, 23 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Picture a ring road, exits A to G, 2 cars drive 1 exit per year in opposite directions and pass each other in 2000. Every 4 years they press a warp drive and blastitize 1 exit in zero seconds. Except every 100 years except every 400 years. They will never break symmetry. A second pair of cars is the dominical letter of March to December. This car will also always be the same distance from 2000's exit as it's mate. Thus G is really GG and will always have only 1 mate, BA will only line up with one of the 14, AA with another of the 14, BB with yet another and so on. Sagittarian Milky Way (talk) 04:45, 23 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

400 Gregorian years = 20871 weeks. —Tamfang (talk) 01:55, 26 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Healthy Beverages

I'm following this diet which I believe is quite effective and was wondering when they say in beverages section and limit intake of juices and milk. What do they mean when they say to limit intake of juices and milk. I get that it's saying 100 percent fruit juices and low fat milk can be healthy in moderation.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Healthy_diet#Harvard_School_of_Public_Health — Preceding unsigned comment added by 220.244.104.154 (talk) 09:26, 23 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

This question has been asked and answered at least twice in recent weeks... One of which, from just 10 days ago, under your IP 193.116.221.63, you erased from the archive.Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2020 August 12 Don't do that. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:02, 23 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There is also Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2019 December 5, where you asked much the same question. I say "you" because all the IP's geolocate to the same place in Australia. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 11:13, 23 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

And 220.244.104.154 has now attempted to remove this thread, and blank the archived thread again. Meters (talk) 03:49, 24 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Papers versus books

Papers are nice, they link up with other literature, and prove things that they say. Books are nice they can give you a completish tour of a subject. But books often don't have good referencing standards, they just kind of say things that are true. And papers aren't very complete. When editing wikipedia it's nice to use papers because you have more confidence that what you are saying is *true* and the most up-to-date version of reality. When editing wikipedia it's nice to use books because you can more sure that you have a *complete* understanding of reality.

Are there good ways of switching between "paper space" and book space? Are there interfaces between the two? Are there tools that will help you. Also the "book space"doesn't feel very well hyplinked - and there tools that link up books.

--Talpedia (talk) 12:14, 23 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I do not share your confidence in the truth of statements made in papers, even assuming you mean peer-reviewed scholarly articles. Books are much less under the influence of the publish or perish syndrome, and the threshold for getting a book published (by a reputable publisher) is arguably considerably higher. See also the replication crisis. Wikipedia prefers secondary sources, which make it easier to assess the importance and credibility that the scientific community assigns to the statements in a paper.

In theory e-book technology should allow hyperlinking, but in practice the potential is not well utilized, and the quality of its realization is often underwhelming. The volatility of pages on the Internet makes it less attractive to spend much effort on this; the lifespan of urls is often disappointing, compared to that aimed for for a book – you don't want your beautiful book to be tainted by the small of link rot. --Lambiam 18:02, 23 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

While I'd 100% echo what Lambian has said here, if you're looking for something in-between books and journal articles, maybe a review paper might be what you're thinking of? --Vitalis196 (talk) 12:52, 29 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Maryanne Trump Barry: "because" or "I guess"?

Am I the only one to understand

and then he got into University of Pennsylvania. I guess he had somebody take the exams

instead of the Washington Post's version of:

and then he got into University of Pennsylvania because he had somebody take the exams

... in the audio recordings of Maryanne Trump Barry's interview? (just search for the phrase in the text... the audio is just underneath)

I mean, it might not make a huge difference and yet... doesn't it sound more like Barry is offering her opinion rather than stating a fact? Thanks for lending your ear! Thanks, thanks, Thanks for answering (talk) 20:45, 23 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Note: You have to be a Washington Post subscriber to use the link. Clarityfiend (talk) 07:23, 24 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

There is a copy on youtube here. --Lambiam 07:59, 24 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Definitely sounds like "because" to me (as written in the subtitles). --Viennese Waltz 08:22, 24 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

In the unambiguous uses of "I guess" by MTB (at 0:02 and 1:20) the interjection is followed by a prosodic pause. In the occurrence at 0:42 there is no such pause. I hear only one (unstressed) syllable, which (to me) sounds more like /kəz/. Apart from the transliteration issue, after the incredulous response "No way! He had somebody take his entrance exams? [...] Yeah, Oh Jesus Christ!", MTB replies "SATs or whatever... That's what I believe, I even remember the name." This suggests a higher level of certainty than the lack of conviction (or reluctance to commit to one's utterance) usually expressed by "I guess". Used as a gap filler, similar to "I mean" or "you know", it hardly signifies anything. --Lambiam 08:27, 24 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Another copy on the youtube channel of AP: here. They transcribe "I guess" (at 1:30). Somewhat annoyingly, they thought it was a good idea to put the audio over DJT droning on in the background, which does not improve the understandability. --Lambiam 13:03, 24 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Since she's still among the living, the obvious think to do would be to ask her. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 14:20, 24 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Would you be able to recall, verbatim, a conversation you had two years ago? Mere mortals cannot do that. ^[1][2] --Lambiam 15:35, 24 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Not necessarily, but I might be able to properly interpret a recording of it. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 16:06, 24 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

And in any case, the issue would not be remembering the exact words she used on that particular occasion, but clarifying her knowledge of the original events. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.25.111 (talk) 16:23, 24 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

It's irrelevant. Thanks for answering says "it might not make a huge difference". It makes no difference. Even if she said "because", she clarifies by adding "I believe", which switches the meaning back to "I guess". Bus stop (talk) 16:30, 24 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

"I believe" can be stronger than just a guess. ←Baseball Bugs ^{What's up, Doc?} carrots→ 20:37, 24 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

While not directly relevant to the American English speaker Maryanne Trump Barry and this particular controversy: for the record, many British English speakers often say "I believe" to qualify statements of which they are actually certain or fairly sure in order to not seem too bluntly assertive, particularly when contradicting another's previous statement but often in other conversational contexts also, such as (but not limited to) proffering an initial response. I myself am very prone to using the term, even though philosophically I reject the mental stance of belief/disbelief entirely. {The poster formerly known as 87.81.230.195} 90.197.25.111 (talk) 18:54, 25 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

Also as an aside to the aside, there are only two things one can say "Things I believe to have happened" and "Things I am lying about believing happened". We can only report our own perceptions. There is no meaningful way to report reality outside of the way we perceived it to occur. We can report subjective degrees of certainty, but at no point can we separate the things we experienced from the act of experiencing them. --Jayron 32 12:44, 28 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]

I'm hearing something else: and then he got into University of Pennsylvania, you see he had somebody take the exams Iapetus (talk) 08:19, 25 August 2020 (UTC)[reply]