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when some person asks me what have you been doing for last 7 or 2 days , What does he mean by that?

Does he mean what I was doing today + yesterday or yesterday and the day before yesterday? Like is the actual/current date always included as one of those two or 7 days? or it is 7 / 2 days besides today (today not included)?

Thank you.

For example, I was looking on my facebook page statistics and I scrolled to show results for last 7 days

It showed me results for these dates: 22.1.2017 - 28.1.2017

However, I did the same on my page in Google Analytics and I clicked show statistics for last 7 days and it showed me 21.1.2017-27.1.2017 - so today was not included.

So how am I supposed to count it? This day not included or this day included as well? Thank you

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  • Where you are from and in your native language, what would the answer be?
    – WRX
    Jan 28, 2017 at 19:52

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In conversation, "the past three days" can depend on what time it is that I'm talking to you. If it's in the morning then I would mean the three days before today. If in the evening I might include the current day, since this day it's mostly over.

But it's not likely anyone cares about specifics other than perhaps the police or your boss, in which case if they're not precise, you should ask:

Policeman: Mr. Vladiz, can you account for your whereabouts the past three days?
Vladiz: Do you mean, including today? Or yesterday, the day before, and the day before that?

With websites like Facebook, the actual value is completely up to the programmer, and can be complicated by things like travel and time zone. If it was me, I would use the past N days (possibly including the current day) based on the time zone of your "home town", but another programmer might choose to base it off of GMT instead.

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I'd assume that the person asking is not being specific and simply asking what you've been doing recently. I do think that the majority of people would not include today if they are asking about the past. The word last is always about the past.

However, the last 7 days on Facebook might be specific to that site. They probably mean seven days back from today, so count back 7 days but do not include today. (Today might be included because they always show you 'today'.)

I will not surprise me to see different and still correct answers because different places and cultures may see this in differing ways.

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  • I am from central Europe, Slovakia and my language is Slovak.
    – Vladiz
    Jan 28, 2017 at 17:36
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    Hi Willow - if you need clarification from the author of the question, please use a comment and not put the question in your answer. That way when they respond, we can incorporate the information into the question and clean up the comments.
    – ColleenV
    Jan 28, 2017 at 19:43
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    It's up to you - it's not a lot of work for me. I have a feeling that you will get a negative reaction from some folks to this answer because it's "too chatty". Usually we directly address other community members directly in chat or comments, and try to keep the answers more matter-of-fact. Things change over time - folks can change their user names, Vladiz is not going to be a newbie forever, etc. Good answers are written to be relevant to someone who might stop by 5 years from now with a similar question.
    – ColleenV
    Jan 28, 2017 at 19:51

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