3 ms·
Actually PI day should be 6/28. It makes a lot of important formulas simpler... makes me sad we still teach PI, when TAU is mostly superior :P
by milesvp 9y ago
Actually PI day should be 6/28. It makes a lot of important formulas simpler... makes me sad we still teach PI, when TAU is mostly superior :P
- dnautics 9y agopi is superior in this respect: If you plug tau into euler's magic formula (e^(tau * i) == 1) it's mostly confusing, but if you plug pi in, (e ^ (pi * i) == -1), it's profound.
- posterboy 9y agoMaybe you developed intuition for one but not the other. It's not at all obvious what kind of difference you perceived.
- dnautics 9y agoThe first case is trivially solvable if tau == 0, or alternatively gives little insight into how imaginary exponents work because 1 is positive. A negative result of the exponentiation function is glaringly unusual, and provokes one to question "what exactly is going on here?", Without being unnecessarily complex (as is the case for nonmultiples of pi)
- posterboy 9y agobut to explain the importance of pi because of complex numbers is still not obvious, it seems to hinge on the imaginary number, which to be honest I know next to nothing about so I don't see the connection.
- dTal 9y agoThat's arguable. That the equation is satisfied by both tau and zero hints that complex exponentiation is periodic. I strongly feel that mathematicians prefer the more complex form because it seems mysterious and mystical, which is fun for them but less pedagogically useful.