Christmas is not equally likely to fall on each day of the week

Christmas is not equally likely to fall on each day of the week(quora.com)

16 points by scoreandseven 3 years ago | 3 comments

Someone 3 years ago |

More ‘importantly’, the 13th of the month is more likely to fall on a Friday than on every other day of the week (https://scienceworld.wolfram.com/astronomy/FridaytheThirteen...)

netsharc 3 years ago |

Geez, I've read the answer 3 times and I still don't get what that table is supposed to show... I'm going to blame terrible presentation of data rather than my own brain.

necovek 3 years ago | |

It's a bit convoluted presentation, that's for sure.

But a particular date in a year (say, Christmas or your birthday) in a 400 year period will fall on Monday 56-58 times, except for the Feb 29 which will only do so 15 times.

The best way to verify this "reading" is to do 7 x (56 to 58) = 392 to 406, or close to 400 (each row should add up to exactly 400).

The next column is about Tuesday, etc. and since they are dependent (eg. when Monday "happens", all the other days follow right after :)), by enumerating all distributions, the poster has noticed there are only 8 different possible distributions (unsurprising because of the repeated nature and 7 days in a week + leap years).