Pi Day Is Coming — But Tau Day Is Better

PerlJedi writes "A few months ago, a Tweet from Randal Schwartz pointed me to a YouTube video about 'Triangle Parties' made by Vi Hart. My nerdiness and my love of math made it my new favorite thing on YouTube. Now, with Pi Day coming up later this week, I thought it would be an appropriate time to point people to another of her YouTube videos: Pi is Wrong. The website she mentions at the end, Tauday, has a full explanation of the benefits of using Tau rather than Pi. Quoting: 'The Tau Manifesto is dedicated to one of the most important numbers in mathematics, perhaps the most important: the circle constant relating the circumference of a circle to its linear dimension. For millennia, the circle has been considered the most perfect of shapes, and the circle constant captures the geometry of the circle in a single number. Of course, the traditional choice for the circle constant is pi — but, as mathematician Bob Palais notes in his delightful article "Pi Is Wrong!", pi is wrong. It's time to set things right.'"

Comments

Agreed

[Ardeaem]

What, pi is 14.3? When did that happen?

Re:Agreed

[Harold Halloway]

Being English, old-fashioned and inaccurate, I prefer to celebrate Pi Day on July 22nd.

Re:Agreed

[wjh31]

22/7 is actually more accurate than 3.14 (0.05% vs 0.04%)

Re:Agreed

[cyachallenge]

The Mnemonic Method of Loci does wonders for remembering digits. I just started with it and on the second day I have Pi at 50 without much effort. From memory: 3.1415926535897932384626433832795028841971693993751

Re:Agreed

[HapSlappy_2222]

For now I don't really see the practical use of remembering Pi to that extent.

Chicks.

Cant eat a slice of Tau to celebrate.

[Kenja]

Thing is, we like pie. Being able to eat a Pi sized slice of Pi at 1:59 on 3.14 is a geeky excuse to consume treats.

Re:Cant eat a slice of Tau to celebrate.

[buchner.johannes]

With Tau, you can have two pies.

Tau day is better

[Bob the Super Hamste]

Tau day is better because I have an excuse to get 2 pies instead of just one. I still celebrate pie day as well as groundhog day, mmmmm ground hog).

Four thirds pi!

[Geoffrey.landis]

Wait, what about four-thirds pi, the constant that relates the volume of a sphere to the radius???

Using 2pi as the so-called "constant" is two-dimensional chauvinism!

Re:Bah. e is better than them all

[Bob Hearn]

Then, when somebody wants to argue that twice e is actually a better constant, we can say "2e or not 2e, that is the question."

Niether side is convincing

[sdhankin]

Both are irrational.

Re:Triangle Panties

[Mr Z]

And, I think it's perhaps a little wrongheaded anyway. The area of a circle is pi*r^2. That'd become tau*r^2/2... You took the 2 out of one place and put it in another. And it does nothing for spheres: Volume = (4*pi*r^3)/3 = (2*tau*r^3)/3; Surface area = (4*pi*r^2) = (2*tau*r^2).

And besides, tau's already claimed as the "time constant" variable, so n'yah!

Re:tau is wrong

[mrnobo1024]

Sure there is: e^(tau * i) + 0 = 1.

Hey, it's really not any more ridiculous than "... + 1 = 0".

Re:tau is wrong

[vakuona]

Umm, no!

e^(pi*i) = -1 implies e^(tau*i) = 1

e^(tau*i) = 1 does not imply e^(pi*i) = -1

The tau version follows from the pi version. The pi version does not necessarily follow from the tau version, because the tau version would still be true if e^(pi*i) = 1.

So the tau version is missing some very important information.