Saturday, October 27, 2012

Friday The 13

Many people would think Friday the 13th will be an unlucky day. Is it possible that there is no Friday on 13th through the whole year? How many Fridays at 13th can we have in a year at most? Can you calculate it out?
 

Puzzle Answer



Answer:

We can calculate out how many days there will be for the 13th on each month if we count from the beginning of the year (January 1). Then we divide total days by 7 to get the remainders. We also need to consider the leap year. Through the whole year we had all kinds of remainders, from 0 to 6. The minimum of occurence for all the unique remainders was 1. It means that we have at least one Friday on 13th. In a regular year, the best chance you can get 3 Fridays on 13th, which are in February, March and December because the remainders of these 3 months are 2. In a leap year, the best chance you also can get 3 Fridays on 13th, which are in January, April and July because the remainders of these 3 months are 6.
 

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