OT: Phenomenon

[Kenneth Brody]

On 6/2/2015 11:07 AM, Richard Kreiss via Filepro-list wrote:
> Many of you like items to do with the date and/or calendar's.
>
> Here is an interesting event.
[...]
> August, in 2015, will have 5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays and 5 Sundays.  This
> happens only once every 823 years.  The Chinese call it ' Silver pockets
> full'. So, send this message to your friends and in four days money will
> surprise you.  Based on Chinese Feng Shui.  Whoever does not transmit the
> message ... may find themselves poor. I obeyed......... (you never
> know).

This is wrong in so many ways.

First, August 2015 only has 4 Fridays.  A simple "cal 8 2015" will verify this:

>     August 2015
> Su Mo Tu We Th Fr Sa
>                    1
>  2  3  4  5  6  7  8
>  9 10 11 12 13 14 15
> 16 17 18 19 20 21 22
> 23 24 25 26 27 28 29
> 30 31

Second, the "5 Fridays, 5 Saturdays, and 5 Sundays" happens *every* time a 
31-day month begins on Friday.  Given that there are seven 31-day months per 
year, and about 1-in-7 months starts on Friday, you will see this "once in a 
lifetime phenomenon" on average once a year.  In fact, it occurs *twice* in 
2016 alone.  (January and July.)

I'm sure there are others (do the Chinese really call it "silver pockets 
full"?) but those two, along with the fact that I see this same thing going 
around every year (though usually they at least give a month that does have 
the 5 Fri/Sat/Sun "phenomenon"), make it obvious there's nothing to it.

-- 
Kenneth Brody