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The pi is a lie… Happy Half Tau Day!
- GavinB 16y agoIf we don't fix this, everyone at the galactic congress is going to laugh at us.
- younata 16y agoI will start using tau exclusively the minute I don't get F's in math for using it.
- joshkaufman 16y agoThat's why it's a "pedagogical disaster."
- martinkallstrom 16y agoAny pedagogical institution flunking students for labeling and using constants when solving math problems should be burned down and the ground upon where it stood strewn with salt so that life never again will prevail there.
- techiferous 16y agoSpeaking of mathematical pedagogical disasters... I taught science and technology at a secondary school for a while and through the process I had to get certified to teach in the state of Virginia. Part of the certification process is passing the math praxis. If I remember correctly, all teachers in the state of Virginia must pass the math praxis I. I was surprised (actually dismayed) at the large number of my colleagues who thought it was challenging or had to take it more than once before passing. Here are some sample questions: http://www.studyguidezone.com/praxis_math.htm http://www.studyguidezone.com/praxis_math.htm My wife (who also got certified to teach in Virginia) just told me that many of her colleagues couldn't pass this simple math test and several had to take it multiple times before passing. She said that some teachers simply couldn't pass it so chose to teach in North Carolina for a while and then move back to Virginia (because after so many years the teaching certification from another state was automatic). tl;dr: The tech leaders of tomorrow will not be from America.
- rudiger 16y agoHow are you getting Fs for using τ? Just write `Let τ = 2π.` at the top of your papers.
- tel 16y agoBecause even at high level math that's pretty annoying. As much as I agree with the philosophical force behind \tau = 2\pi, the conventional force behind rarely having to define or question the definition of \pi is bigger.
- jacobolus 16y agoHave you tried it? It’s really not too bad, unless you’re in some context where τ is expected to mean something else – and those are relatively rare – or unless you’re simultaneously flouting other conventions.
- tel 16y agoYes, it's honestly super trivial to make the substitution. It's a really minor translation cost on the myriad of formulae that are written involving pi. But if I see "define tau = 2 pi" at the beginning of a paper I'm going to have a hard time taking it seriously. It's got useful pedantic purposes, but frankly it's so trivial at the level of good maths that the only reason anyone would write that is political. And then it's a minor headache. And then mathematical curtesy dictates that you omit excess. — Similarly, why do we write numbers in base 10? It's an arbitrary convention and in many contexts other bases might be strictly beautiful (conceded for argument's sake). I'll just write at the top of my paper that all numerals are written in octal for the sake of beauty.
- jacobolus 16y agoThe context of this discussion was graders marking people down on homework assignments, not published journals. You’re right that it’s political. Changing any kind of convention is always political. [By the way, I believe you mean pedagogical rather than pedantic.] — The use of octal or some other number notation system instead of decimal causes a dramatically larger conversion difficulty for unfamiliar readers than the use of τ does. It’s not a comparable distinction. By your logic equating all such choices, no one should ever use a minority notation for anything, even if they think it has substantial benefits. Thankfully, not everyone agrees, and sometimes our notation improves (A couple examples I particularly like are Knuth’s use of the Iverson Bracket in writing sums, and [] and {} notation for Stirling numbers.)
- pnathan 16y agoBut if we don't use Pi, then how can the international brotherhood of Eta Beta Pi exist (hint, say it fast)?
- archangel_one 16y agoIf the only thing the others at the galactic congress laugh at us about is our usage of pi instead of tau, I reckon we'd be doing pretty well :)
- zyfo 16y agoThey'll also laught at the west for seeing chess as the ultimate intellectual game instead of Go. While the Baroque rules of Chess could only have been created by humans, the rules of Go are so elegant, organic, and rigorously logical that if intelligent life forms exist elsewhere in the universe, they almost certainly play Go. - Edward Lasker
- nazgulnarsil 16y agoin the rules for first contact (they do exist) should be "Show them Go and Bach ASAP so we at least have a chance of not looking like idiots."
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- snissn 16y agoThis joke is starting to get pretty annoying.. There are lots of things we do for conventional reasons, such as having electrons exhibit negative charge. If you're doing any actual complicated math or physics, the last thing you care about is having a different constant floating around in your terms. What it is, however, is a great learning tool - This thing called pi, maybe we could get away with, or even be better off calling it 2pi. - Can get lots of people thinking about math and possibly learn something cool like trig. But when used in a psuedo intellectual way, it 'really grinds my gears'.
- anonymoushn 16y agoElectrons exhibiting negative charge is something that would be difficult to fix because the fix would result in a lot of confusion. Using tau as the circle constant doesn't cause nearly as many problems. I don't see it as a joke; we should do it.
- amalcon 16y agoIt strikes me as more analogous to using j = sqrt(-1) so that it doesn't conflict with current: it works fine, but you're never going to get everyone to do it because people want the papers to stay consistent. Actually, in this case, there's a particular discipline that's especially inconvenienced (physicists, due to the torque conflict). Contrast with j: there's a particular discipline that benefits, and they use j=sqrt(-1) all the time.
- 16y ago
- itsnotvalid 16y agoJust missing a stroke under the horizontal line.
- Fice 16y agoJust think of 2π as a single symbol — the circle constant. Why do we need another name for 2π?
- tspiteri 16y agoIs 22π equal to 2 times 2π or is it equal to 11 times 2π? That is, is 22π equal to 2(2π) or (22)π? If 2π is a single symbol, then 22π would be equal to 2(2π), which would be really confusing.
- Fice 16y agoWhat I was trying to say is that there is no need to introduce another symbol τ as we can simply refer to "the circle constant" as 2π. I am not suggesting to treat 2π as a single symbol in formulas.
- jerf 16y agoThe hard part is getting people to agree that 2pi is the true "circle constant" and that pi was a historical accident; once you've gotten over that hurdle agreeing that it should have its own symbol is a no-brainer.
- ilovecomputers 16y agoI'm sorry, but on pi day, I eat a whole pie. I am not settling for half a pie.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- camiller 16y agoNo no, tau is 2pi. So eat 2 pies.
- kissickas 16y agoOn June 28th. Today you can eat half a tau...
- araneae 16y agoWhich is a whole pie. So not a problem.
- ilovecomputers 16y agoHow does one eat a tau?
- camiller 16y agoconvert into pi equivalent units.
- wallflower 16y agoGood luck to those who hope and dream to attend MIT, for today is admissions decision day! 3/14 9:26pm (not 1:59pm this year because of Class of '15)
- dskhatri 16y agoMITLeaks: http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/the_selection_process_application_reading_committee_and_decisions/decision_date_2011.shtml http://www.mitadmissions.org/topics/apply/the_selection_proc...
- cjtenny 16y agoI sent this link to the admissions staff. 6/28 decisions next year, perhaps?
- nickbarnwell 16y agoI think that might be a bit cruel to those who get deferred in December, not to mention slightly impractical ;) Only 7 hours and 15 minutes to go....
- graywh 16y agoIt's funny when the dup makes the front page and the original doesn't. Guess it's all a matter of timing. http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2322355 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2322355
- billswift 16y agoActually, when I first saw them, they each had 4 upvotes and were side by side on the front page.
- mhartl 16y agoI saw the first submission, but I wanted to use a different headline, so I appended a question mark to the URL and submitted a new link. It's always a good sign when people submit your stuff before you do, but in this case I had a clear idea of what I wanted the headline to be. If I recall correctly, essentially the same thing happened on Tau Day itself, with the same result.
- graywh 16y agoAnd I didn't realize you were the duper until later.
- tybris 16y agobah e^(0.5τi)+1=0
- tspiteri 16y ago> bah e^(0.5τi)+1=0 nah e^(τi)=1
- tybris 16y agoWell darn, that looks even nicer.
- pixcavator 16y agoIt's not as good! You can get it from the original formula easily, but not vice versa.
- waterhouse 16y agoYou can get both formulas from this one: e^(0.25τ) = i but that doesn't make it a better formula. Or if it did, then the following formula would be infinitely superior to all of the above (and it doesn't directly mention either π or τ): e^(ix) = cos x + i*sin x
- pixcavator 16y agoYes and yes. A formula is better if it reveals more of the math behind it, in a compact form.
- Dabacon 16y agoe^(τi)-1=0. This is obviously better since it not only contains the fundamental constants e, tau, and the beautiful numbers 0 and 1, it also includes a minus sign, emphasizing the fact that we are working over a field with an additive inverse. ;)
- snes 16y agoe^(iT)=1 http://vihart.com/blog/pi-is-still-wrong/ http://vihart.com/blog/pi-is-still-wrong/
- sp332 16y agoThis tau video was posted already, but it's off the front page and... you really need to see it! http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2321796 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2321796
- mhartl 16y agoI love this video. Vi Hart says, "No! You're making excuses for pi." With this beautifully succinct exclamation, Vi cuts through the pi smokescreen and puts her finger squarely on the problem. This phrase will, I think, become a rallying cry for tauists everywhere. As the author of The Tau Manifesto, I am proud to have Vi on Team Tau!
- lmkg 16y agoTau is only convenient in geometry. In calculus, Pi rules the day because the natural unit is radians. Since I like calculus more than geometry, I won't be accepting Tau anytime soon.
- loup-vaillant 16y agoThen why the full angle is 2 dammed Pi radians? I prefer the simpler Tau radians instead.
- dougws 16y agoRead the Tau Manifesto (linked int he article). He covers that and shows why Tau is easier to use there, too. Dude was a physics prof at Caltech; I think calculus is sort of important to him, too.
- ddlatham 16y agoIf your natural unit is radians, then you're arguing for tau rather than against it. How many radians in the circle? Tau How many in half a circle? Tau / 2 How many in a quarter turn? Tau / 4 Much better than mentally switching from a quarter circle to half a pi. And if you're using it in calculus, it's more natural to integrate from 0 to Tau than from 0 to 2 Pi.
- sophacles 16y agoWait.. 1. Calculus was invented to make the geometry easier -- basically opposing geometry and calculus is a broken idea. 2. Geometers use radians too. 3. All the stuff other repliers said about 1 tau radians...
- dskhatri 16y agoTell that to my 12-year old nephew who memorized π to 128 decimal places in celebration of today! He'll be heart-broken to find out he memorized an inconsequential number.
- waterhouse 16y agoI memorized π to about 180 decimal places at age 9, but I supported the switch to τ when I read about it, and I have no regrets.
- jonsen 16y agoHe should have memorized π in binary then.
- graywh 16y agoonly the last bit is different (if you can find it)
- 3pt14159 16y agoI'm having a bit of crisis. Ever since I found out about Tau, I just can't look at my username the same. Maybe I can get it changed to 6pt283185? In either case: Happy me day!
- camiller 16y agoHmmmm.... You are half the man you should be. ;)
- tokol 16y agoI already bought a pie for the office. Where can I find a half Tau?
- bugsy 16y agoThis whole thing is ridiculous because it ruins the whole justification for baking pies on 3/14. Those of you that want to study the Dao De Jing on 6/28 are free to do so but please leave those of use that eat pies on 3/14 alone.
- deleted 16y ago[deleted]
- rtaycher 16y agoAt my HS they gave everyone a piece of pie on pi day.
- randomibis 16y agoEvery objection here is answered succinctly and powerfully at http://tauday.org/ http://tauday.org/ I suggest you read it if you haven't done so.
- justatdotin 16y agothat's 14.3, not 3.14
- gsivil 16y agoMaybe we should wait for June the 28th for that discussion. Just to show some respect for pi that was with for quite some time
- VladRussian 16y agowell, Gamma(1/2) = sqrt(pi), putting tau there wouldn't make things better.
- redcap 16y agoWhile we're at it, can we please: - change electric theory so that it's a flow of negative charge and not positive. - get the US to use SI units instead of Imperial or whatever they think they're using.
- sliverstorm 16y agoI dunno, I'm rather fond of people forcing pie into my hands on Pi Day...
- DennisP 16y agoKinda messes up Euler's Identity. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler%27s_identity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Euler%27s_identity
- DennisP 16y agoOk, so I read down further and I'm wrong.
- vjwaks 16y agoYou think you've got issues : my sci fi series TAU4 is getting all your emails, as Google alerts! I am learning a great deal! check me out at vjwaks.com or on Amazon books. VJ WAKS TAU4 HAMMERSPACE Los Angeles, CA