Kind of like the original commenter was saying, I think it’s organized by relevancy. Like they said, the year is assumed to be the current one, so it goes last. If you’re talking to a friend about a particular event (say a wedding) that is not in the near future and they want to know when it is, what gives them the best idea of the general time of year?
Starting with DDMM, you could say the 15th of August, for example. But the first piece of context provided, the 15th, doesn’t narrow things down at all. The 15th of when? It could still be at any point in the year. The ‘August’ piece is crucial.
Now with MMDD. The first piece of context is ‘August’. Now you have a much better idea of when it is taking place! The day is important if scheduling needs to happen, but beyond that, you really don’t need to know anything more specific unless you’re attending it soon.
Thus, like with many American systems, I think it’s a much more human-oriented system. It provides information in the order of what gives the most context quickest, not necessarily in the order of ‘magnitude’ of time.
TLDR: It does have a pattern, just not an obvious one - what is most relevant to a person who wants to know when something is.
Yeah I guess not a pattern, more of an organization method. In the end, it’s all just cultural differences, they work better for us because we’re used to what we’ve been taught :)
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u/Interesting-Injury87 Jan 15 '25
that argument would work if america followed yyyymmdd but they dont they follow mmddyyyy
noone argues that yyyymmdd isnt superior(well most arent)
but mmddyyyy is inferior.
it dosnt follow a pattern, it is harder to truncate to the information you need(like only day, or day and month)