Stephen Evans

A definitive family reference service

How old is
Stephen Evans?

— years old

—

Calculating with unnecessary precision…

Current age in seconds —

The fractions department

Because whole years are far too vague.

Each figure shows the largest completed fraction of the current year. No rounding up: that would be age fraud.

Halves——
Quarters——
Eighths——
Sixteenths——

Needlessly precise

One life, several units.

Calendar years—Fraction of the current birthday-to-birthday year
Binary years—Base 2, five fractional digits
Octal years—Base 8, five fractional digits… because the rest wasn’t enough for Matthew
Hexadecimal years—Base 16, five fractional digits
Decades—
Gregorian mean months—
Lunar months—Synodic months, approximately
Traditional dog years—Scientifically indefensible
Weeks—
Days—
Hours—
Minutes—
Seconds—
Milliseconds—

Next official upgrade

Next birthday

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Interplanetary age fraud

On other planets, the number gets much better.

Approximate ages using each planet’s orbital period.

☿Mercury—years
♀Venus—years
♂Mars—years
♃Jupiter—years
♄Saturn—years

Ages of civilisation

Decimal years are only one way to make this complicated.

Four historical number systems, cheerfully repurposed for a job they were not necessarily designed to do.

Maya · Long Count style
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Elapsed whole days as baktun · katun · tun · uinal · kin.

1 kin = 1 day · 1 uinal = 20 days · 1 tun = 360 days · 1 katun = 7,200 days · 1 baktun = 144,000 days. This is a Long Count-style duration, not a Maya calendar date.
Ancient Egyptian · additive decimal —

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Egyptian numerals used repeated symbols for powers of ten rather than positional digits. Here the symbols represent completed years.
Roman —

Completed years, rendered in Roman numerals.

Oh, alright then… seconds — Extended modern notation: each pair of parentheses multiplies the enclosed Roman numeral by 1,000.
Compact, familiar, and now pushed well past the point at which the Romans would have considered this a sensible request.
Babylonian-inspired · sexagesimal —

Age in years expressed in base 60, with four fractional sexagesimal places.

The semicolon separates whole years from fractional places; the colon separates base-60 digits. A modern notation for an ancient positional idea.

For the record

Born
Sunday, 5 September 1943
Birth time
07:00, Europe/London
Completed birthdays
—
Precision policy
Excessive