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IN DEFENCE OF A LEAP YEAR: TRIBUTE TO MY FRIEND



Ok, seriously, this isn’t my call (mathematico-logics, I mean). My call is medicine. But then, my curiosity has been fueled by the peculiar date of birth of my friend. He was born on the 29th of February, 1988, and so i'd try.
Permit me to state the Naegele’s rule which is the standard way of calculating the due date for a pregnancy. The rule estimates the expected date of delivery(EDD) from the first day of the last menstrual period by adding one year, subtracting three months (or adding nine months), and adding seven days to the first day of a woman’s last menstrual period(LMP).
Example:
I am presenting a 26 year old Turkish woman, who is a banker whose last menstrual period (LMP) begun on the 16th March, 2013(16/03/2013). What is her expected delivery date (EDD)?
LMP=16/03/2013
         +1 year= 16/03/2014
          -3 months/+9 months= 16/12/2014
           +7 days= 23/12/2014
Therefore, the EDD is 23rd of December, 2014
I would like to reverse the process a bit so as to arrive at the LMP, since the EDD is given (assuming EDD was 40 weeks/280 days from LMP)
EDD= 29/02/1988
LMP=?
-1 year= 29/02/1987
+3 months= 29/05/1987
-7 days= 22/05/1987
LMP= 22/05/1987
Anyways, now that the LMP has been ascertained (provided the date of delivery wasn’t beyond/before the EDD), we ought to discuss the leap year, oughtn’t we? Why is there a leap year?
A leap year is a year in which a leap day is added to the calendar, so as to synchronize it with the seasons.
Why do we need leap years? Leap years are needed to keep our calendar in alignment with the Earth’s revolutions around the sun. This is because the earth takes about 365 days, 5 hours, 48 minutes, and 46 seconds to circle once around the sun. if the 29th day wasn’t added to February on the Gregorian calendar (the standard calendar for civil use), after a century, our calendar would be off by about 24 days. Does that look small? Ok, how about this: we would have lost about 6 hours off our calendar every year!
The implications are that without a leap year, we would all have unstable birthdays and there would be asynchrony of the calendar.
A leap year is evenly divisible by 4, 100, and 400. It was introduced by Julius Caesar in 46 B.C. but has since been modified.
Really, without the leap year, life on earth wouldn’t be as organized as it is now.
To the friend who made this blog post possible #Oladele Femi#…and who indeed made blogging a reality for me.
HAPPY BIRTHDAY!!!!
Your EDD, if right, states that you weren’t conceived in a leap year, but and that without your date, the earth would be asynchronized. You are indeed special.






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