What Wolfram Alpha Has to Say about Your Birthday

Article by George Norman (Cybersecurity Editor)

on 08 Feb 2011

Want to find out some interesting information about your birthday? If your answer went something like “you know that’s right”, just like Guster says in the TV series Pysch, then all you need to do is head over to Wolfram Alpha, the computational knowledge engine developed by British-born physicist and Mathematica creator Stephen Wolfram.

One of the most common queries on Wolfram|Alpha is a user entering his or her date of birth to see how many years, months, and days old he or she is today,” said the Wolfram Alpha team. “Since this feature first became popular, we added more birthday-specific features for this query type. By adding 'birthday' to your query, you’ll get even more detailed information, such as a birthday countdown, a notable dates pod, and astrological birth information.”

Here is the information you will be able to access after you type in your birthday. Let’s say you were born on the 24th of April 1983. Here’s the info Wolfram Alpha will present to you if you type in birthday April 24, 1983:

Input interpretation – the 24th of April is the 114th day of the year and 16th week of the year.
Birthday countdown – how many days are there until your birthday (75 days in this case) and how many days have passed since your last birthday (290 in this case).
Current age – the 24th of April 1983 was 27 years 9 months and 14 days ago, so you are 27.9 years old. Or 1450 weeks and 2 days old, or 10,152 days old. You could slip it into a conversation that you are 10152 days old.
Notable dates – in this section you will find that on October 3rd, 2012, a Wednesday, you will be 1 Saturn years old; or that on the 10th of July, 2011, on Sunday, you will be 15 Martian years old. Click “More” and you will find even more notable dates.
Astrological birth information – in this section you can see what was happening in the cosmos on the day of your birth. In this case the sun was 33 degrees longitude in Taurus and the moon was 171 degrees longitude in Virgo.

If you would type in April 24, 1983 without the "birthday" part, you would get the following:

Input interpretation – the 24th of April is the 114th day of the year and 16th week of the year.
Time difference from today – the 24t hof April was 27 years, 9 months and 14 days ago; or 1450 weeks and 2 days ago, or 10152 days ago.
Time in 1983 – the 24th of April is the 114th day of the year in the 16th week of the year.
Observances for April 24, 1983 – this is where official holidays or major observances are displayed. Wolfram Alpha says there was no official holiday or important observance on that date.
Events on April 24, 1983 – apparently tennis player Daniel Hantuchova was born on this date. Click “Show anniversaries” and you will find out that on April 24, 1983 the 10th anniversary of Dean Armstrong’s birth was celebrated or that the 2nd anniversary of the introduction of the IBM Personal Computer was celebrated.
Daylight information for April 24, 1983 – the sun rose at 6:07AM, set at 8:10PM, and duration of daylight was of 14 hours and 3 minutes.

To get started with Wolfram Alpha, just click here.


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