15-Aug-2020 / 73rd or 74th Independence Day
Today our country
is celebrating the Independence Day- but there is a controversy whether it is 73rd
or 74th. This is the “Off by One” syndrome by computer programming parlance. Let’s
analyse and understand it in simple logical steps.
Our country was
declared independent on 15-Aug-1947. And today is 15-Aug-2020. Simple
arithmetic tells us that the difference is 73 years- it means that today we
have completed 73 years and NOT 74 years.
Simultaneously,
just today we stepped into the 74th year of Independence. And it will last till
15-Aug-2021, on which day we would have completed 74 years of independence.
Note that 73 or 74
years denotes a ”Duration of Time”, and 73rd or 74th event denotes a “Point in
Time”. For people more conversant with Arithmetic, 73, 74 etc. are “Cardinal”
numbers, while 73rd,74th etc. are “Ordinal” numbers.
Don’t confuse this
two terms which are different. So the correct statement is that on the day of 74th
Independence Day we completed 73 years of independence.
Let’s check it:
with the same logic on 15-Aug-1947 we celebrated the 1st Independence Day and
we completed 0 year of independence. Right? Yes, and the algebraic form are: on
(n+1)th event day we complete n years of that event.
Now let’s come to
the concept of “Anniversary”. Any event happening for the 1st time is NOT an
Anniversary. The counting of anniversary starts a year after. So, on the 73rd
Anniversary of our Independence we complete 73 years of independence. And the
algebraic form is: on (n)th event Anniversary Day we complete n years of that
event.
To summarise, if we
use “Anniversary” then number denoting the duration and point are same. But if
we don’t use “Anniversary” then number denoting the duration is one less than
the number denoting point.
Having explained
that, an exception can be stated here. Most people say it’s my 16th Birthday
and my age is 16. What they mean is that, it’s my 16th Birthday “Anniversary”
and my age is 16. The “Anniversary” word they omit inadvertently to cut the
expression short. And that has become a norm, even if it is arithmetically
incorrect.
