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Thursday, May 1, 2008

How Genealogy Can Determine Your Age!

This takes less than a minute. Work this out as you read .

Be sure you don't read the bottom until you've worked it out!

1. How many Great-Grandparents do you have full name, date of birth, and date of death for?

Secondary spouses don't count. Only (pardon the redundancy) direct ancestors count.

2. Multiply by the number of biological parents you have, regardless of whether or not you have any information on them. (Everyone should have the same answer here. 2.)

3. Add the number next to your paternal grandmother on your ahnentafel chart. (Once again, everyone should have the same number. 5.)

4. To honor the year the Roman Emperor, Claudius, adopted Nero -- Multiply it by 50

5. To honor the birth of Revolutionary War soldier, Nicholas Fish, add 1758.

6. If you haven't had your birthday yet this year, subtract 1.

7. Now subtract the four digit year that you were born.

You should have a three digit number

The first digit of this is the number of great grandparents you have all that information on!

The next two numbers are:

YOUR AGE

Don't deny it!

Note: This will not work if you are at least 100 years old. (But, congratulations!) This will also have to be tweaked, just a little, in future years. Only one step will have to be changed, though. I'll leave it up to you to figure out which one.

5 comments:

  1. John, I just tried this and I have double checked my math...It did give me the right age (45) but came out to 545 in the end, whereas I only know about 4 great grandparents (although maybe I am about to find out about another!)

    1. 4 great grandparents
    2. 4 + 1 = 5
    3. 5 x 2 = 10
    4. 10 + 5 = 15
    5. 15 x 50 = 750
    6. 1758 + 750 = 2508
    7. birthday not yet, so less 1 = 2507
    8. 2507 - 1962 = 545

    Just did this with a calculator to check...Very true on the age though! Will be curious to see what everyone else comes up with.

    Did I do something wrong? Or am I really 100 years old (I look damn good for my age if so, and will enjoy telling people :) )

    ReplyDelete
  2. Your math is correct. I messed up in creating the process, and have corrected it by removing step 2.

    ReplyDelete
  3. LOL! It worked for me ---gave me correct age. But, golly, think of the fun I can have next time someone asks me for my age. I'll just reply, "OK. Help me figure it out --- I've got 8 g-grands in my records all figured out. Multiple 8 by my 2 parents; then add five; now multiple that sum by 50 . . . . ." etc etc etc. LOL!
    TERRY

    ReplyDelete
  4. A lot of fun, John! And it worked for me!

    ReplyDelete
  5. This worked perfectly!

    431

    I love these fun little quizzes!!

    Cheers,
    Elizabeth :-)

    ReplyDelete

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