Age-Dependent Age Units
I occasionally think about how the speed of time passing is dependent on the age you are. The basic premise is that the older that you are, the smaller a percentage of your life any increment of time is.

With this in mind, and the fact that my daughter firmly corrected me for saying that that she was six ("six AND A HALF"), today's shower thought was about when we should switch what units we refer to people's age as.

This addresses the question of when you switch from days to weeks when talking about a baby's age, and extends it on to old age (where I take a bit of a back-track; see below).

What I've done is assumed that age 30 (years) is about when years start going by really fast, used the percentage of your life a year is at that point (about 3%) and used that fraction as the point that we should change age units starting with minutes after birth. I adjusted things slightly to better fit with units of time that we frequently use (rather than, say, 3 minute increments I went to 5).

So here we go:

• At birth, count age by minutes (i.e. "she is 14 minutes old")
• At 30 minutes old, count age in 5 minute increments (i.e. "he is 55 minutes old")
• At 150 minutes old, count in 10 minute increments
• At 5 hours old, count in half hours
• At 15 hours, count in whole hours
• At 30 hours, count in 2 hour increments
• At 2 days, count in quarter day increments
• At 7.5 days, switch to half days
• At 15 days, switch to full days
• At 30 days, switch to 2 day increments
• At 8 weeks, switch to 1 week increments
• At 6 months, switch to quarter months (i.e. "she is 7 and a quarter months")
• At 7.5 months, switch to half-months (i.e. "he is 13 and a half months")
• At 15 months, switch to full months
• At 2.5 years, switch to quarter years (i.e. "she is 6 and three quarters years")
• At 7.5 years, switch to half years
• At 15, switch to full years

Now check this out:

• At 30 years, switch to 2 year increments (i.e. you will never be 37, you'll go straight from your 36th birthday to your 38th 2 years later)
• At 60, switch to 5 years.

After a while individual years become important again (as a sign of achievement), so I'm suggesting:

• At 90, switch back to 2 year increments
• At 100, switch back to 1

And there you have it.

So my daughter will be, no doubt, happy to know that she is 6 and three-quarters, my wife that she will be 36 for an additional year, and my parents that they are 60.

No need to thank me. Your eye-rolling will be quite enough.
- posted @ 12:55 PM 2 comments