The end of a decade?

[Neil]

Just heard the radio announcer proclaim today as the last day of the decade! I have not heard this nonsense since 1999. In my opinion, a decade of years would be the first through the tenth year. In the current case, 2001-2010, would be the decade they are referring to. I suppose any group of ten years is a "decade", ie, if you say "it took me a decade to accomplish...", you would count from whenever you started 'till you finished. But a general decade of years, in my opinion is 1-10, and not 10-9. So why would a ninth year such as 2009 be proclaimed 'the end of a decade", unless you proclaim every years the end of a decade?

Just curious, what do you guys (and gals) think?

[spuddog]

Agree.

Scott

[RealBlackStuff]

We are indeed at the end of the decade, look at the large decimal: 2000 - 2009 is this decade.
The next decade goes from 2010 - 2019, etc.

[A31]

Yep, end of the decade! End of the decade where lots of good ThinkPad models were launched!

[Neil]

Of course, RBS, you are correct. But why no big to do over the last day of each year being the end of a decade? Last year was the end a decade as well, and nobody made a big fuss about it.

Edit: I missed your point. You're saying a "decade" is counted year ten through nine. And I'm of the opinion we should count one through ten.

[dsvochak]

We are indeed at the end of the decade, look at the large decimal: 2000 - 2009 is this decade.

So the first decade was 0 - 09?

[killer]

The first year in the modern calendar was 1. There was no year zero. So ten years after 1/1/1 was 1/1/11. Had there been a year zero then the next decade would begin tomorrow. It does, in fact start on 1/1/2011.

I hope that is as clear as custard!

[Neil]

So the first decade was 0 - 09?

I think RBS was saying the first decade of the Common Era should be counted from the beginning of 1 BCE through 9 CE. Which seems odd to me, but evedently a lot of people think of it that way.

[Colonel O'Neill]

Oh no... not all this stuff about zeroth years and stuff... ><"

If only someone could just do OPTION BASE 0

[Neil]

If only someone could just do OPTION BASE 0

Now that is something I had not thought of, and it explains a lot. Programmers start counting at 0. The rest of the world starts counting at 1. I'm not a programmer.

[RealBlackStuff]

I was an IBM mainframe programmer for almost 35 years.
My 'Glory Days' with the highest income happened when everybody got their knickers in a twist about the year 2000!

[qviri]

Just curious, what do you guys (and gals) think?

I'm afraid that regardless of what the logical or correct answer might be, that ship has sailed in 1999 with the "end of millenium".

And, year 0/1 wonkiness aside, two thousand years later it does make a fair amount of sense to divide into 0-9 decades.

It's all relative anyway, by the traditional Chinese calendar we are somewhere around year 4706, might as well let people have their fun with end of decade stuff.

[bill bolton]

In my opinion, a decade of years would be the first through the tenth year.

The first year is the "zero numbered" year, the tenth year is the "nine numbered" year..... its the same way that age/birthdays work. You don't turn "one year of age" until you have already lived a year.

Cheers,

Bill B.

[rkawakami]

By that account then, there was no "first" decade because the calendar year started with "1". And in some Asian cultures, you are "one" when you are born.

The only reason why today would mark the "end of the decade" is because when people refer to the 80's or 90's, that span runs from the "zero" year to the "nine" year.

[Colonel O'Neill]

Regardless, it is a worthwhile moment to look back upon everything.

Then again, anyone could argue every moment belongs under that category.

Enough philosophizing... HAPPY NEW YEAR! ^_^

[dr_st]

Oh, yeah. I vividly remember this argument about 10 years ago. Back then I was openly participating in it as well.

Mathematically, there really is only one correct way to look at it, as Neil explained. Because the dates are counted ordinally, not cardinally. Just like there is no day 0 in a month, and no month 0 in a year, there is no year 0, and the first decade is indeed 1-10, making 2010 the last year of the first decade of the third millennium.

It is perhaps a bit confusing in English, because although people generally call January "the first month" and the first day in the month "the first day", when it comes to years they say "year 2004", not realizing that it really means "the 2004th year". In the Russian language, for instance, there is no such issue, because they do say "the 2004th year" in common speech. This was perhaps the reason why no one (or almost no one in Russia) tried to celebrate the millennium at the turn of 1999 and 2000.

So then, 10 years ago, I found it very surprising and even a bit irritating that people could not grasp such a simple concept. But then I realized that some people either don't think mathematically, or treat mathematics as some arbitrary set of rules in a crazy game of nerds, not having anything to do with reality, or just don't care.

And following that, I understood that it really doesn't matter. After all, as qviri pointed out, it is all very relative anyways, since there are many different calendars in the world, and since even the commonly used Christian calendar, which is supposed to have been started at the birth of Jesus, is now believed to be off by a few years anyways.

So let everyone celebrate whenever they feel like it. If you think about, people make some much worse mistakes in life than being off by one in the counting of years...