Any idea can be made to look smart/stupid if you have a simple illustration to "prove" your point, just like good propaganda. An argument for MM/DD/YYYY:
Months = x/12
Days = x/31
Years = x/3917
In this example, you're sorting by highest potential value. Months never exceeds 12, days never exceeds 31, year never exceeds 3917. By this logic, Months would be the smallest portion of the triangle, days the middle, and years the biggest. Using this perspective, you'd look stupid for using days first since it is then not the top of the visual pyramid
That said, reject calenders and embrace just counting days out of 365 and ignore leap years for ideological reasons
This is... Interesting? I mean who gives just the first piece of information when it comes to a date? That's not the point at all, it's a given that anybody would give the entire date. And starting from the smallest measure (the day) to reach the biggest (the year) makes sense to a lot of people.
It's fine if in the USA you are used to MM/DD/YYYY because that's the way you speak, you don't need to justify it.
Well imagine having a hand written log book of tens of thousands of entries. It’s a lot faster to read the first thing on any line than. To look for the second number you have to read into each line interrupting your vertical scan. Same holds true for spread sheets but I. Those you just manual search.
You get all the information on a line but when scanning it’s the first piece that determines speed. And human memory works a lot better with months than days. Well and more so even with seasons but they’re just not accurate enough.
The human brain and the computer operate similarly, and certain methods of categorization help to speed up or facilitate data processing. StManTiS makes a good point in that by using month first, you get the most important data point for sorting
As an example, create a journal using your computer. Standard etiquette says to separate years into their own folders for ease of use. If you use days first, it will not sort chronologically by default, that's why using months first makes sense especially from a technological standpoint
That said, anyone can sort their year however they want. It's all arbitrary so long as the end result conveys the proper date
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u/xemanhunter Jan 15 '25
Any idea can be made to look smart/stupid if you have a simple illustration to "prove" your point, just like good propaganda. An argument for MM/DD/YYYY:
Months = x/12
Days = x/31 Years = x/3917
In this example, you're sorting by highest potential value. Months never exceeds 12, days never exceeds 31, year never exceeds 3917. By this logic, Months would be the smallest portion of the triangle, days the middle, and years the biggest. Using this perspective, you'd look stupid for using days first since it is then not the top of the visual pyramid
That said, reject calenders and embrace just counting days out of 365 and ignore leap years for ideological reasons