I think I may prefer that one, because it also allows me to figure out people’s birthdays. The key insight to making that one faster is to realise you can precalculate and memorise the year value for the year you’re currently in. Granted, having to memorise 12 magic numbers for the months maybe makes that one harder, but for some reason I immediately memorised the table upon looking at it once.
To answer the question: I don’t really need to be able to do this, but I like it. It’s a fun, short, mental exercise. I even set up a daily reminder to quiz me on a random date every day.
But it is practically useful, and it surprised me in how often I use it. Someone tells me of an event that’s going to be on a certain date and without breaking conversation I can figure out what day of the week it’ll be. I still think I’m fairly slow (I tend to double-check myself), but can still do it consistently slightly faster than someone who needs to take their phone out.
Also, on a couple of occasions it has happened that as a group we needed to know a day of the week, someone checked it on their phone and made a mistake and I was able to catch it.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=40464664
I think I may prefer that one, because it also allows me to figure out people’s birthdays. The key insight to making that one faster is to realise you can precalculate and memorise the year value for the year you’re currently in. Granted, having to memorise 12 magic numbers for the months maybe makes that one harder, but for some reason I immediately memorised the table upon looking at it once.
To answer the question: I don’t really need to be able to do this, but I like it. It’s a fun, short, mental exercise. I even set up a daily reminder to quiz me on a random date every day.
But it is practically useful, and it surprised me in how often I use it. Someone tells me of an event that’s going to be on a certain date and without breaking conversation I can figure out what day of the week it’ll be. I still think I’m fairly slow (I tend to double-check myself), but can still do it consistently slightly faster than someone who needs to take their phone out.
Also, on a couple of occasions it has happened that as a group we needed to know a day of the week, someone checked it on their phone and made a mistake and I was able to catch it.