By Michael Hartley
April Fool's Day is a date where people play tricks and pranks on their friends. However, it can be extremely embarrassing if you get the date wrong. Some time ago, I prepared a worksheet for calculating the date of Easter in any year. On the Easter Date Worksheet, you write the year in the box marked 'Year' at the left, do some calculations, and the date of Easter Sunday appears at the right.
So, I figured, why not also make a worksheet for April Fool's Day? After all, if you have some tricks prepared, it's good to know the correct date on which to play them!
The formula for the date of Easter is quite complicated. Fortunately, I discovered a formula for the date of April Fool's Day which is a little less complicated. To use the worksheet, you'll need to brush up on some arithmetic - particularly division with remainders and order of operations (BIMDAS or PEDMAS or whatever acronym you were taught).
So, don't wait, download and print my April Fool's Date Worksheet, grab yourself a pencil and maybe a calculator. Soon you'll know what date April Fool's Day is this year!
Once you've got that, here's a real challenge: can you figure out why this worksheet always gives the correct date? The answer is not as simple as you might think!