Ordinal Date - Calculation

Calculation

Computation of the ordinal date within a year is part of calculating the ordinal date throughout the years from a reference date, such as the Julian date. It is also part of calculating the day of the week, though for this purpose modulo-7 simplifications can be made.

For these purposes it is convenient to count January and February as month 13 and 14 of the previous year, for two reasons: the shortness of February and its variable length. In that case the date counted from 1 March is given by

floor ( 30.6 ( m + 1 ) ) + d − 122

which can also be written

floor (30.6 m − 91.4 ) + d

with m the month number and d the date.

The formula reflects the fact that any five consecutive months in the range March–January have a total length of 153 days, due to a fixed pattern 31–30–31–30–31 repeating itself some more than twice.

"Doomsday" properties:

For m = 2n and d=m we get

floor (63.2 n − 91.4 )

giving consecutive differences of 63 (9 weeks) for n = 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6, i.e., between 4/4, 6/6, 8/8, 10/10, and 12/12.

For m = 2n + 1 and d=m + 4 we get

floor (63.2 n − 56.8 )

and with m and d interchanged

floor (63.2 n − 56.8 + 118.4 )

giving a difference of 119 (17 weeks) for n = 2 (difference between 5/9 and 9/5), and also for n = 3 (difference between 7/11 and 11/7).

The ordinal date from 1 January is:

• for January: d
• for February: d + 31
• for the other months: the ordinal date from 1 March plus 59, or 60 in a leap year

or equivalently, the ordinal date from 1 March of the previous year (for which the formula above can be used) minus 306.