Another Math Error, still inexcusable

Actually I noticed this error first (before the SciAm error).

In the July 20 New Yorker in an article about Sarah Palin they said

It may be inferred from this that Palin sees a certain parallel between the events of July 3, 2009, and those of July 4, 1776. And, indeed, her speech had echoes of the document signed in Philadelphia two hundred and thirty-three years and one day earlier.

Notice anything? Let's totally oversimplify. Suppose it were last year that the D of I was signed, July 4, 2008. How long ago was that? A year and a day?

Obviously not. It was a year minus a day.

Well, as far as complicated thinking goes, let's just say i was definitly not a year -plus- a day ago from July 3rd, 2009. In simplified but as correct-as-it-gets math, a year -and- a day ago from July 3rd should land on something like July July 2nd.

I hedge with all this 'simplified' and 'correct-as-it-gets' because calendars are not so simple. First and foremost, there are leap years, an extra day in there. But then what would a 'year' mean as far as days? Sometimes 365, sometimes 365? or always 365. Are we counting in exact days, then converting to years? Then you'd have to do a bit of fancy arithmetic 2009 - 1776 + floor((2009-1776)/4) blah blah blah (yes, I'm almost -certain- that I'm missing a and then you'd have to present it in decimal. Oh, did I forget the Gregorian correction for centuries? And, pow, the exception to that exception for the year 2000 (years divisible by 400)?

What's the point? If you're oversimplifying, at least you can follow those simple rules: change in year, you can subtract -years-, then from that milestone correct in the right direction.

Yes, I sent email to the New Yorker ending with:

Curse you, fact checker

Math Error in Scientific American Math article

Look, I'm only doing this because it is 'so obvious'. In the August 2009 issue of Scientific American there was an article about some longstanding unsolved problem in topology having been solved. The intro paragraph said:

Relax. Until recently, lurking in the dark recesses of mathematical existence, there might have been a really weird sphere of 254 dimensions, or 510, or 1,026. In fact, for all you knew, you might have had to worry about weird spheres when visiting any space with numbers of dimensions of the type 2^k - 2.

Any thing strike you here? 2^10-2 = 1022, not 1026. Easy mistake to make. Doing a calc of a sequence in your head, plus or minus one error. But fercrissakes...it's a math article. The only reason I bother to post this is because I can't find a record of it any where on the web (with a simple google search). I hold Scientific American in the highest regard. I can't seem to find a 'corrections' page though. Obligatory relevant link: Mathematicians celebrate baffling new proof