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Perfect; to my lisp startup file was just added: (defconstant tau #.(* 2 pi)) Regarding adoption, I think it's worth pointing out that these sorts of conven
by tc 16y ago
Perfect; to my lisp startup file was just added:
(defconstant tau #.(* 2 pi))
Regarding adoption, I think it's worth pointing out that these sorts of conventions can and do shift within a generation. I recall quite clearly while growing up the convention for indicating years < and >= the year one [1] was B.C. and A.D. It seems like over the past few years we've definitively decided on B.C.E. and C.E. instead [2].
All it really takes to catch on is adoption by a handful of elementary school textbooks -- and those publishers have adopter much crazier things in the past. As the manifesto points out, this is distinctly pedagogically useful, so it doesn't seem beyond the realm of possibility.
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[1] Correction: Julian/Gregorian years begin with 1 A.D. (I still prefer the AD/BC convention, as the two identifiers have an equal number of characters.)
[2] I'll admit that my perception of prevalence here may be strongly influenced by the fact that Wikipedia has adopted this convention.
- erlanger 16y ago> It seems like over the past few years we've definitively decided on B.C.E. and C.E. instead. I don't think that is the case. Amongst recently published works of history that I have read (1st ed. books), from some very reputable publishers (Cambridge, Oxford, UC, etc), I have only seen BC/AD in use.
- pyrtsa 16y agoOnly there is no year zero, by (that) definition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_(year) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/0_(year)
- Semiapies 16y agoNor are BCE and CE all that commonly used.
- amalcon 16y agoI have no problem with people trying to do this in principle. I really don't care enough, but other people can. The symbol "tau", however, is an especially poor choice for a trigonometric symbol, because it's also used for torque. You won't get many physics teachers to change over if every time you try to calculate a torque from a force and radius, you run into a symbol conflict.
- Groxx 16y agoHow many symbols aren't in use, though? If you've got a notably better one, the "manifesto" may consider changing, but they seem (to me) to have pretty good reasons for choosing tau.
- amalcon 16y agoI'd ideally prefer to pick one that isn't used in angular things. Because non-English, non-Greek glyphs are somewhat underused for this sort of thing, and because of visual similarity to pi, I'd suggest the hebrew Het or Russian л. However, I really have no problem with continuing to use the multi-glyph symbol 2pi.
- samatman 16y agoToo much visual similarity to pi is a recipe for many factor-of-two errors.
- vorg 16y agoWhy a multi-glyph symbol 2π when a single-glyph symbol 2π would be better. By creating a new symbol by joining the bottom-right of the 2 to the topleft of the π, we can make a new one-glyph symbol, perhaps put it next to € in Unicode. And instead of saying two words "Two Pi", we could say it as one word "Twopi", with stress on the first syllable, much like the word "teenager" used to be spoken and written as two words a century ago.
- Groxx 16y agoI like the idea of "Twopi". Looks like it could be pronounced like "Toupee". (yes, it'd be a mispronunciation, but people do that) Do you also favor the almighty interrobang‽
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- 16y ago
- Groxx 16y agoExcept BC/AD -> BCE/CE is a label change, not a numbering change, and it's arguably for largely P.C. reasons; conforming to P.C. is the "in" thing. We in America have also changed from Indians to Native Americans to American Indians to Indigenous Peoples to whatever, and N* to Black to Colored to African American to something supposedly unoffensive while still defining the same group. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Era http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Common_Era --- edit in response to edits: I too agree with preferring BC/AD, they're the same size and look more different. BCE/CE both end in "CE", and the similarities between "B" and "E" don't help :\ And I see BCE more-ish in recent history books, but not much outside there (though there aren't qualifiers for most things I read, it's all too recent). I'm voting for positive values == CE and negative values == BCE. They're already numbered that way, just adopt the frickin' sign instead of the suffix! Nearly everything becomes easier, left-to-right hints at relative age prior to even seeing the number, and parsing from a computer standpoint is as easy as to_i().
- eru 16y ago> I'm voting for positive values == CE and negative values == BCE. They're already numbered that way, just adopt the frickin' sign instead of the suffix! Nope, not really. There's no year 0. Neither A.D. nor B.C.--that's because zero wasn't known to the guys who invented this numbering system, and also because those guys counted years with ordinal numbers (first year, second year, etc) and not with cardinal numbers since Christ. You see the same confusion over death (Friday) and resurrection (Sunday): Jesus rose on the third day, not after three days. (Since the weekdays are not given in the bible directly, you can also find alternative suggestions for the weekdays.) Disclaimer: Words like Jesus, Christ, death and resurrection are used purely as labels to describe stuff some people believe in. No judgement implied.
- billybob 16y agoI think it's ridiculous to rename dates just to remove their religious connotations, especially when the reference point is still the (slightly inaccurate) birth of Christ. If someone wanted to start with a new system, where year 0 is the Big Bang, that would be reasonable - it would put all dates on the same time scale instead of having to convert between BC and AD. But if you're going to keep the religious reference point, why pretend it's something else? Prejudice is the only reason that I can see. Of course, when we revise our estimates of when that happened, it would screw everything up again...
- steveklabnik 16y agoUgh, I know this is slightly offtopic, but there's nothing more I dislike than B.C.E and C.E. I can understand not trying to promote a Christian-centric worldview, but by only changing the labels, they accomplish nothing. Now, the birth of Christ sets a 'common era,' which arguable makes it _more_ 'offensive' than just acknowledging what happened on that particular day.
- davidcuddeback 16y agoThe switch to B.C.E. and C.E. is also because the year of Jesus' birth is debated. Some believe he was born in 4 C.E. At least that's what I recall from school many many years ago. Personally, I prefer "B.C." and "A.D." because those two are more different from each other (edit distance of two) than "B.C.E." and "C.E." (edit distance of one, unless you count periods). Edit: Wikipedia says Jesus was born in 5 B.C. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jesus)
- smallblacksun 16y agoWhile you are correct that most scholars don't believe that Jesus was born in 1 AD, the reason the change was made was to distance scholarship from Christianity.
- Naga 16y agoThere is another dating system which aims to get around this, by actually changing the numbers, which is called Before Present (BP). It sets 0 to be January 1, 1950, as an arbitrary date of the present. So, 1500 BP is 450 AD. I see it used most often it dealing with archaeology.
- seasoup 16y agoAre you sure that April 20, 2010 isn't 0 BP? :)
- jcsalterego 16y agoUnix epoch had it right. Let's just all count seconds before/after 1 Jan 1970.
- klodolph 16y agoAD vs. BC: I prefer using CE with negative numbers, as suggested by ISO 8601. E.g., year -30 CE is year 31 BC.
- vorg 16y agoToo many people would get confused, forgetting to substract 1 from the BC-tagged number, or unsure whether to add or substract 1, or wondering if the other person remembered to subtract 1. I suggest adding 7000 to all dates, as well as using negatives. So... 2010AD -> 9010 1AD -> 7001 1BC -> 7000 31BC -> 6970 5000BC -> 2001 (except people talk about year ranges, not years, when refering to events that far back, so there'd be no confusion with our current AD references)
- pook 16y agoOr we can just adopt the Discordian Calendar and, by increasing confusion, reduce disharmony. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discordian_calendar http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Discordian_calendar Hail Eris!
- mkramlich 16y agospeaking for US-ians: would the Texas State School Board actually allow the rest of us to switch from BC/AD to BCE/CE? :)
- stassats 16y agoThere is no need in "#.".