National Square Root Day

Today is National Square Root Day. I have no idea what that means. I don't know if we are supposed to rally together all math lovers and mourn over the irrationality of the square root of 2, or rejoice over the incredible characteristics of the perfectly square 144.  Whatever we are supposed to do to celebrate today is completely lost on me in light of the reason for today being the first square root day since 2004. As I am sure that you know, square root days come seldom. The next one will not be until 2016, and in fact there will only be 9 of these days in the next century.  Now, I love numbers, and I enjoy math and some good honest 1040 filing. But man, the logic that went behind  3/3/09, is rather disturbing. In fact, I am almost insulted that they have created such a day.  Do you dare to ask why?

Whether you ask or not, I will tell you. In my above example, today is square root day because 3 x 3=9.  Isn't that clever? What the creator of such a holiday has failed to mention is that he* truncated the year. So that instead of the year being represented as 2009, which it is, it is in fact labeled as 09. Does anyone else find this misleading? We have no idea what Century it is, and in fact this exact same day occurred in 1909. Interesting. 

I would like to propose that we do not continue to do the lazy thing, but instead openly embrace the entire year and if you would like to celebrate square root day then do it on an appropriate date. For example, February 14th of the year 2025 is the 45th day of that year. the square root of 2025 is in fact 45.  Thus, that lovely day should be a square root celebration. (note: our original creator will also celebrate square root day in 2025, but alas it will be on May 5th). Following this wonderful example we can see that the last true square root day was in fact in the year 1936 and was on February 13th. As you can see this is in fact a very rare occasion as only one square root day occurs in every century. Of course, at the beginning of the AD period they were much more common, but now they are practically extinct. 

In light of this new information, I hope that you have a wonderful math filled day and I look forward to our truly root filled day in the upcoming year of 2025. What kind of party would you like? Be forewarned we will only have one such party in our lifetime.

*he in this sense is a generalization I in no way am suggesting that the creator of this holiday was male. Alas I do not know the gender of our wonderful clever little mathematician.