Question Regarding The Calculation of Ages Using Birth Dates
Today, October 21, 2016, is the 76th birthday of Manfred Mann; and, when I went in to look at his page on Wikipedia at shortly before 1 PM MST (UTC -7), it said that he was only seventy-five years of age even though it had his correct birthday. So, this left me confused as to why his age had not been updated to seventy-six. And, I decided to take a look at the information in an edit pane. It had his information as follows:
| birth_date = {{Birth date and age|df=y|1940|10|21}}
Not knowing how the information for the birth_date field ought to look, I went to the Wiki page for Carrie Fisher—she's another person born on October 21, but she is ten years younger than Manfred—and her age was properly shown as 66 along with her correct birthday. But, her information was listed as follows:
| birth_date = {{birth date and age |1956|10|21}}
So, obviously the difference between these two fields is that Manfred's includes "|df=y" between "age" and "|1940|10|21}}" and I am curious how this resulted in the difference that I observed. I decided to go in and experiment with Manfred's info by removing "|df=y" from his birth_date field, and I found that his page was now showing his correct age of seventy-six without me having to make the change. Therefore, I am wondering what the df=y portion did to make Manfred's calculator provide different results from Ms. Fisher's. Also, since I believe I went into Manfred's page prior to it turning 1 PM here, I wonder if the transition to 1PM was the trigger to make Manfred's age come out correctly.
I am sure that this is all very fundamental to many of you; but, I am very new to the "behind-the-scenes" view here at Wiki. And, I enjoy the chance to learn from others. So, if you have any information on this situation, I would be grateful to learn something new from you.
Sincerely, G. "Deak" Lundlee
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