4 ms·

I always enjoy these little diatribes. However tau will never beat out pi because of one very important reason. The chicken scratch that passes for writing the

I always enjoy these little diatribes. However tau will never beat out pi because of one very important reason. The chicken scratch that passes for writing these days makes tau unreadable. Tau can be a: r, 7, t, tau, etc... For the sanity of TAs everywhere, please stop this madness.

Jach 15y ago
It's just a pi with one leg in the middle. It's pretty easy to read. Also engineers (who don't have very good writing) have been using tau for things like a time constant (among other uses) for a long time. The bad handwriting problem is solved very easily, TAs should complain to the professor to make it a requirement that if you guys can't read it, it's wrong. I've had classes like this, I just use LaTeX.
- DrHankPym 15y ago
  Yeah, I remember using Tau mainly for time constants back in school. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_constant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_constant
- orbitingpluto 15y ago
  I did a symbolic dynamics course that required the letter xi ad nauseum in lowercase. I still can't write that damn letter.
  - Dove 15y ago
    One of my math profs in grad school called lower case xi "a scribble". And when he had to write it on the board, it was.
    - ars 15y ago
      Pic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Xi_uc_lc.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Xi_uc_lc.svg
    - Jach 15y ago
      Several fellow students and a couple profs started calling zeta "squiggly diggly". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Zeta_uc_lc.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Zeta_uc_lc.svg I'm just glad the Hebrew and Phoenician alphabets haven't caught on more than they have already.
madhadron 15y ago
Really? I just took off over half the points for probles that I couldn't easily read until handwriting improved. Students with illegible chicken scratch suddenly developed perfectly readable handwriting overnight. End of problem. For my part, I write two very clear faces, an italic for my prose, and a block for my math. Writing clearly isn't difficult. The vast majority of people are already capable of it. Most of them at some point internalized that they had bad handwriting, perhaps rationalized because they were writing fast, and so write poorly because it's an element of their identity. As for tau, I could see using a symbol for 2pi removing a class of error when I'm calculating, so I might adopt it. However, I doubt I'd use pi. More likely ð.

Jach 15y ago

It's just a pi with one leg in the middle. It's pretty easy to read. Also engineers (who don't have very good writing) have been using tau for things like a time constant (among other uses) for a long time. The bad handwriting problem is solved very easily, TAs should complain to the professor to make it a requirement that if you guys can't read it, it's wrong. I've had classes like this, I just use LaTeX.

DrHankPym 15y ago
Yeah, I remember using Tau mainly for time constants back in school. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_constant http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Time_constant
orbitingpluto 15y ago
I did a symbolic dynamics course that required the letter xi ad nauseum in lowercase. I still can't write that damn letter.
- Dove 15y ago
  One of my math profs in grad school called lower case xi "a scribble". And when he had to write it on the board, it was.
  - ars 15y ago
    Pic: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Xi_uc_lc.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Xi_uc_lc.svg
  - Jach 15y ago
    Several fellow students and a couple profs started calling zeta "squiggly diggly". http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Zeta_uc_lc.svg http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Zeta_uc_lc.svg I'm just glad the Hebrew and Phoenician alphabets haven't caught on more than they have already.

madhadron 15y ago

Really? I just took off over half the points for probles that I couldn't easily read until handwriting improved. Students with illegible chicken scratch suddenly developed perfectly readable handwriting overnight. End of problem. For my part, I write two very clear faces, an italic for my prose, and a block for my math. Writing clearly isn't difficult. The vast majority of people are already capable of it. Most of them at some point internalized that they had bad handwriting, perhaps rationalized because they were writing fast, and so write poorly because it's an element of their identity. As for tau, I could see using a symbol for 2pi removing a class of error when I'm calculating, so I might adopt it. However, I doubt I'd use pi. More likely ð.