What is a leap second, anyway? - Loren on the Art of MATLAB

[poster]

Today's post is brought to you from Peter Perkins, a member of the MathWorks development team.Having worked on some of MATLAB's time and date functions, people at The MathWorks sometimes ask me questions about calendars and timekeeping. Often it goes something like this: in early January (or July), I stare at my phone for a moment during lunch and blurt out, "Bulletin C just published! No new leap second next June (or December)!", and then after awkward silence and "not again" looks from people who've heard this before, someone new says, "What the heck is a leap second, anyway?" I'm no expert, but my standard answer begins, "So, it turns out the earth is slowing down." The rest of the story follows.Along the way, I'll show some uses of timetables and datetimes that are useful for working on time series data.Table of ContentsSo, it turns out that the earth is slowing down ... but

...read more >>



More...