Math We Should Stop Using Pi

[Interstellar Planet]

Pi used to be my favorite number before I read this:

http://www.tauday.com/tau-manifesto

I agree that tau is much more elegant and useful than pi. What do you think?

 

[Mojave]

But Pi is so tasty.

 

[Urwumpe]

Pi used to be my favorite number before I read this:

http://www.tauday.com/tau-manifesto

I agree that tau is much more elegant and useful than pi. What do you think?

Pi or tau, what does it really matter as long as it does the same job?

 

[Quick_Nick]

I side with tau on the pi vs tau debate. But I'm much more interested in the base-12 vs base-10 debate. *derail*

 

[Hlynkacg]

I agree that tau is much more elegant and useful than pi. What do you think

I think that 1/2tau would replace 2pi as "that annoying math value that keeps showing up in all my algorithms" and that the same people who are currently trumpeting tau would start complaining about how we should really be using the less elegant but far more useful pi.

 

[asbjos]

Pi has escaped from being purely a mathematical constant to become something cultural. It has so much history, and even movies and songs have been made about pi.
Even though you may argue that tau is more conventional to use, I would say that pi is simply too integrated into our culture to simply just substitute it with tau after so many years.

It's just like the 10-base system and 12-base system debate, it's simply too late to change it now.

 

[Artlav]

Also, multiplying by 3.141592 is hard.
Let's redefine Pi to 3, shall we?
Where is my universe's root console...

Segmentation fault

Huh?
I hate that undocumented hebrew code...

 

[Interstellar Planet]

Pi has escaped from being purely a mathematical constant to become something cultural. It has so much history, and even movies and songs have been made about pi.
Even though you may argue that tau is more conventional to use, I would say that pi is simply too integrated into our culture to simply just substitute it with tau after so many years.

It's just like the 10-base system and 12-base system debate, it's simply too late to change it now.

I agree that the decimal system is FAR too integrated into daily life to change, but I think we could still accommodate tau without replacing pi, especially in trig. It would make learning the unit circle and graphing trig functions easier.

 

[RisingFury]

Pi or tau, what does it really matter as long as it does the same job?

1/4 of a circle is Pi/4, right? NOOOOOOOO!!!!!!

You've no idea how many times I've made that mistakes. How many points I've lost on math and physics exams and how many students repeat the mistake.

 

[Andy44]

Everything I've ever coded uses pi...and now you want to change it?

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[BruceJohnJennerLawso]

Everything I've ever coded uses pi...and now you want to change it?

And if we're not allowed to fix the giant #$%#$% Ben Franklin introduced to electronics by setting the wrong standard for current flow direction, we sure as hell arent changing pi. :facts:

 

[ex-orbinaut]

Tau instead of Pi? Dozenal instead of decimal? :lol: We're already familiar with the latter to an extent, aren't we?

12 inches to the foot, now, convert that to some distance of the new base 12 meter, which would have to be an equivalent distance to the original, of course...

Ready? 1, 2, 3, GO! Wait sorry, that's; 1, 2, 3, 3.6, GO!, now. No, even that's not right, because the "decimal places" are now dozenal, too...

[Sigh] People "in charge" of this, please. Desist from around with fundamentals to show how very clever you are, and in so doing providing yourself pretexts to procrastinate on actually going forward with something useful, whatever that may be today. Have we really sunk that low? I would be tempted to call its bluff.

This truly does epitomize the Age of BS; a radical universal change just to draw a divide of "before and after" merely for the sake of it. Many a bridge, locomotive, high rise and sea going vessel has been built using the decimal system and Pi by engineers. It does the job fine, and where other bases are required (eg; computers), they can easily be learned for the required application by the associated specialists.

Enough said. Jeez!

 

[Urwumpe]

Sounds like the story about programming and formalism introduced by electricians into IT... where people take over the development of an existing software, complain about all the formal errors in it, like using global variables or multiple if statements instead of a switch.... and then blame the previous developer and his informal programming to the customer specifications for the bugs that they introduced into the new versions after the original programmer left the development.

 

[Notebook]

You think thats bad, just wait till June...

leap second

http://www.wired.com/2015/01/torvalds_leapsecond/

 

[Ghostrider]

First Pluto and now Pi? NEVER!

Git yo' grubby mitts outta my sciencey stuff, homie.

 

[Pipcard]

Tau would be more intuitive for trigonometry (unit circle) and circumference calculation.

But then the area of a circle would be (τ/2)(r²)

Maybe they can coexist? Or would that just complicate things more?

 

[Andy44]

Wait a minute: I've heard of tau before, but what's all this about switching to base 12?! What the...? Who the...? Am I taking crazy pills? Someone actually thinks that's a good idea?! Not a prank?

 

[Pipcard]

Wait a minute: I've heard of tau before, but what's all this about switching to base 12?! What the...? Who the...? Am I taking crazy pills? Someone actually thinks that's a good idea?! Not a prank?

It would make dividing (dozenal) "10" (12 in decimal) by 3, 4, and 6 into whole numbers more convenient. And that's the only advantage of base 12, afaik. Not enough to justify replacing the system which we are already used to. But it is kind of interesting.

 

[Unstung]

Wait a minute: I've heard of tau before, but what's all this about switching to base 12?! What the...? Who the...? Am I taking crazy pills? Someone actually thinks that's a good idea?! Not a prank?

Base 12 is apparently already used in some cultures. Here's a video explaining the idea:

[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U6xJfP7-HCc"]Base 12 - Numberphile[/ame]

Like Tau, both are intended to make simple mathematics easier for people.

I personally wouldn't want to replace pi because the people who continue using pi after learning basic algebra should have no problem remembering that a circle is 2pi radians. However, the base 12 system could make day-to-day mathematics easier for everybody.

---------- Post added at 06:10 PM ---------- Previous post was at 06:02 PM ----------

I almost forgot, switching to Tau would make the fact that I know 3.14159265358979323846264338327950288419716939937510582 irrelevant. How can I appall impress people if they don't know what pi is?

 

[Interstellar Planet]

Tau would be more intuitive for trigonometry (unit circle) and circumference calculation.

But then the area of a circle would be (τ/2)(r²)

Maybe they can coexist? Or would that just complicate things more?

(1/2)τr² would make the area of a circle more similar to other formulas:

distance: (1/2)at²
kinetic energy: (1/2)mv²

And I still can't get over the fact that e^iτ = 1.