I can't stand this parenthetical. it's not strange at all!
(Strangely, the 20th century is considered to have started Jan. 1, 1901, so there are a handful of other, verified women still alive who were also born in the 19th century.)
(Strangely, the 20th century is considered to have started Jan. 1, 1901, so there are a handful of other, verified women still alive who were also born in the 19th century.)
For someone who is clearly perturbed that most people don't know this archaic and inconsistent rule, I'm surprised you're perturbed by a writer who is helping your cause by including a parenthetical. I suspect the writer selected the word "Strangely" to prompt the reader to pay special attention to the rule, because what he's about to say is going to violate many people's intuition and assumptions.
If you can't stand that people are unfamiliar with this rule, then this writer should be on your Christmas list.
This is a different linguistic construct. We have decades like the 1990's, which are like the 30's.
Linguistically, we have:
1800's = 1800-1899
19th century = 1801-1900 (since AD started in 1, so the first 100 years, or century were 1-100)
One of those forms is linguistically similar to your 30's, the other is not.
Imho, it is not inconsistent and it is not a rule. It is a fact (as long as one uses the Gregorian calendar where there is no year zero[1]).
The first century is 1 to 100. The second century is 101 to 200. and so on. After a while things get a bit blurry. Eventually the 21st century is 2000 to 2099, as proven by humans holding their big parties on Jan 1st 2000 instead of Jan 1st 2001.
Humans start at one, but weary of the strict logic of it. Without acknowledging it and without agreeing which century, humans sneak in a 99 year century so that centuries work as if zero-indexed; 0-99, 100-199,...,1900-1999, 2000-2099.
What then of the argument "Array indexes should start at 1 because that is what humans do."? It fails two ways. First, that is not in fact what humans do, (and the parenthetical strangely is evidence of that.) Second, humans weary of strict logic. Having the computer do what humans do is a bad idea.
Are you a Lua programmer?
Now we're in the "two thousand and fifteenth year of our lord". Imagine all the off-by-one errors if years were zero-indexed.
Also, it wasn't until Fibonacci in 1200 or so before the western world developed a working relationship with zero.
But natural counting numbers are always 1-indexed anyway. The second dozen starts at 13. Bakers excepted, of course.
Besides, it is not all that clear if someone just says "Jan 1 marks year one" whether it marks the end of the first year or the beginning. With dates, it usually marks the beginning. That's why it is 1-indexed. We hardly count anything else that way, so why would you assume it is 'natural counting'?
Aside from BASIC, maybe.
sorted table by "Default base index" and at first picked FORTRAN, considered COBOL and Smalltalk for a while then saw Lua and thought that should resonate with people. My personal experience with 1 based indexing is from Matlab and Pascal (though you can base your indexes on whatever value you want there).
It's sad that 538 has turned into a pop-stats site that runs on volume and snappy headlines.
It's our fault, they're catering to our demands. You can't run a media company any other way. No one wants to read read (although I'd bet on average everyone spends far more time reading). So you get wham-bam, buzzfeed-esque content. Even on HN, long form articles will inevitably be met in the comment section with a "tl;dr?".
But Nate's a stats guy, not a marketer. Brand dilution is a thing. I don't begrudge him for selling out. I just wish my domain-based trust filter hadn't been broken in the process.
I sure hope they put together some solid election coverage.
Incidentally, Nate didn't sell out when 538 left the NYT, he sold out when 538 was picked up by the NYT.
But content quality was higher (and volume lower) at NYT than post. I've been a reader since well before the NYT imprint, and I don't think the quality went down significantly at NYT.