Asymmetrical Information

I think this is slightly more useful for journalists: http://www.weirdconverter.com/

Useful for market speculators as well.

Thanks Jane!

I'm probably missing something, but what does this do that cannot be done by subtracting two dates in Excel?

I'm obviously missing something too. I mean, I'm married now, but I'm pretty sure that back in the day I found it pretty simple to calculate the distance between dates.

Use Excel to build a template. Use some of the mathematical and logic skills which got you into U. Chicago Business School!

Date calculations can be tougher than you might think. Not only do you need to take into account leap years (and how many people know about the century rules for leap years) but depending on the accuracy required you might need to deal with shifting time zones, differing calendars (e.g. Gregorian vs. Julian), and even the time of day in some cases.

Many computer languages (such as Java) have a complex set of classes for dealing with times and dates.

'Distance' betweeen two dates??

Is this some kind of corollary to the fact that that “Time is the greatest distance between two places.”

Tom beat me to it, but "distance" between dates has no meaning... you mean "duration" or "time"?

Sorry... my inner pedant coulnd't be restrained.

EI

Thank you, that's very cool.

When I worked in aerospace manufacturing we used to use circular plastic "date finders" that looked like this

http://www.identity-links.com/date-finder-calendar-card-p-4722.html

We would often know the cycle time to make parts or assemblages and once we knew the start dates we would use the date finder to calculate the finish dates.

Oh, crap! I will be 15,000 days old on July 27th.

most software packages, which I believe includes Excel and I know includes Matlab, will have a function that converts any date into a number. It is then easy to calculate differences between any 2 dates.

heh, Yancey, I'm a shade over 15,000 myself...

so lemme see, I want to launch a resource hog like excel, and put in the date and all that, or launch a website from favorites, drop the numbers and go...

what is the matter with you peoples? still using a slide rule to figure out resteraunt tips?

so, Megan, I'll bet you can get a little script for your phone, or for the desktop... so you don't need the connection... oops, more overkill, sorry. :D

geoff - on the other hand dealing with java's rococco date functions is probably the most pain in the ass aspect of that language.

I've often found timeanddate.com handy both in my job as a litigator and in my blogging, just for the ability to quickly bring up the day of the week of a particular date in the past.

Not just for professional reasons...
Occassionally, I will throw a surprise 10,000 (or 20,000) day birthday party for a friend. It's a little geeky but it always surprises them. No gifts, no fuss, just fun! We've used Excel in the past and it works fine too.