Back in May I showed you how Genealogy Can Determine Your Age. I indicated that the procedure would have to be altered slightly each year. So, I have done so:
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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 decimal 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 marriage of George Washington and Martha Dandridge Custis, add 1759. [Genealogical note: George Washington may be considered by many Americans as "Father" of the nation, but he had no children, so he has no biological descendants.]
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.
gp = number of grandparents
ReplyDeleteby = birthyear
Ignoring the -1 correction for those who have not had their birthday yet, the formula is
( gp * 2 + 5 ) * 50 + 1759 - by
= 100 * gp + 2009 - by
= 100 * gp + age
It is to make this work for centenarians; just modify the formula to use gp * 1000.
Yes, Tamura, but the result for (100*gp+age) isn't surprising to anyone. The result for (100*gp+2009-by) is probably equally boring to most people.
ReplyDeleteThat's why the math has to be made a little more complicated to confuse those who aren't mathematically inclined. They start to wonder what 1759 has to do with anything. In the realm of magic it is known as 'misdirection.'
Pretty cool! My result was 550!
ReplyDeleteI will claim my answer is 639. I will only be able to make that claim for 10 more days.
ReplyDelete