4 ms·

Am I the only one who was confused what the 'tau' referred to in http://www.theoremoftheday.org/NumberTheory/Willans/TotDWillans.pdf http://www.theoremoftheday.

• osoba 10y ago
  tau = 2*pi
  • thomasahle 10y ago
    I wish the authors would include a small note "tau = 2*pi". Maybe one day it won't be necessary, but for the foreseeable future it would quite increase readability.
• biofox 10y ago
  I was also confused. Personally, I find the use of tau nonsensical -- especially when it's used alongside pi. Established conventions should only be changed when there's a clear need to do so. Inventing a redundant constant does little other than add additional cognitive load. It's not like the tau advocates can break backwards compatibility -- there's too much literature that uses pi. The result is that everyone must now remember both pi and tau.
  • osoba 10y ago
    I think tau was used on purpose in that article to avoid confusion with the prime counting function, typically denoted pi (unrelated to the constant pi)
• deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
• saycheese 10y ago
  Here's the explanation of why Tau is used: http://www.theoremoftheday.org/Annex/taumanifesto.html http://www.theoremoftheday.org/Annex/taumanifesto.html Background of Tau: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_(geometry)#Tau_proposal https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turn_(geometry)#Tau_proposal And a nice animation of Tau: https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Circle_radians_tau.gif#mw-jump-to-license https://commons.m.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Circle_radians_tau...
• Sean1708 10y ago
  Yes very confused, but I think we're just overthinking it and that tau is just being used with it's normal definition.