Haha this gave me a great laugh!

But as for OP, replacing all pi wit tau/2 will just take out a 2 from half the mathematics it's used in and put it in the bottom of the other half. Just a dumb idea in general

Mazer

Canada1086 Posts

July 05 2011 20:37 GMT

#322

You'd think he has better things to spend his time on.

Steel

Japan2283 Posts

July 05 2011 20:42 GMT

#323

There's a lot of formulas that include pi in mathematics and physics and there are several simplified formulas that have odd numbers of pi which would be annoying if 2pi was made tau and pi was eliminated. I can't think of specific formulas but I can assure you that from the several field integrals i studied in electromagnetism there were quite a few.

Pi has worked elegantly for a long time and so I don't feel there is a need to change the constant because we often see 2pi.

MERLIN.

Canada546 Posts

July 05 2011 20:50 GMT

#324

I disagree with the "its not broken don't fix it" philosphy, that really hampers progree. Look at the American use of the Imperialistic method of measure. It is extremely inefficent, change is sometimes good.

I belive that the only thing holding this back is the us of "tau". That is extremely counter productive, using an inefficent name for an efficent symbol cancels the progress entirely.

Hundisilm

Estonia99 Posts

July 05 2011 21:11 GMT

#325

Seriously though - what are the benefits of tau over 2π?

They have exactly the same value (that means all the equations are the same), but with the added benefit that you don't have to rewrite any textbooks.

Plutonium

United States2217 Posts

July 05 2011 21:27 GMT

#326

lower case Tau is really easy to confuse with a lower case t, a problem because it's used frequently as a time variable.

Your lower case t needs the little hook on the end of it, because otherwise it's too easily mistaken for a plus sign.

Upper case T and upper case Tau look too similar, and is pretty much exclusively used as a temperature variable.

Craton

United States17249 Posts

July 05 2011 21:27 GMT

#327

On July 06 2011 05:50 MERLIN. wrote:
I disagree with the "its not broken don't fix it" philosphy, that really hampers progree. Look at the American use of the Imperialistic method of measure. It is extremely inefficent, change is sometimes good.

I belive that the only thing holding this back is the us of "tau". That is extremely counter productive, using an inefficent name for an efficent symbol cancels the progress entirely.

That comparison is almost apples and oranges.

CombatFan

Canada6 Posts

July 05 2011 22:52 GMT

#328

--- Nuked ---

keeblur

United States826 Posts

July 05 2011 23:09 GMT

#329

More of a hassle than it's worth.

Chras

Canada50 Posts

July 05 2011 23:23 GMT

#330

Radian measure is the dumbest and most unintuitive part of math. I cringe at the sight of questions involving trigonometry simply because of radian measure.. Changing this to Tau is so much more them just removing a 2 in equations, and anyone who has had to go through this uncomfortable learning period, where you learn that three quarters of a circle is equivalent to 3 halves of pi, would agree with me. Some of you don't understand how this change would make measuring angles so much more intuitive.

I definitely support this change.

Danglars

United States12133 Posts

July 06 2011 01:16 GMT

#331

Can't rewrite history! Pi has been loved and people have grown up with pi. Nerds memorized it to 100 digits, then to 500 digits and further. We take 2*pi to be the ratio of a circle's circumference to radius, and it's just fine. We've memorized important equations with pi (For ex. Euler's and the normal distribution).

Leave it.

Hundisilm

Estonia99 Posts

July 06 2011 06:23 GMT

#332

On July 06 2011 08:23 Chras wrote:
Radian measure is the dumbest and most unintuitive part of math. I cringe at the sight of questions involving trigonometry simply because of radian measure.. Changing this to Tau is so much more them just removing a 2 in equations, and anyone who has had to go through this uncomfortable learning period, where you learn that three quarters of a circle is equivalent to 3 halves of pi, would agree with me. Some of you don't understand how this change would make measuring angles so much more intuitive.

I definitely support this change.

Why didn't you just memorize it as 2pi*3/4? This feels like a teaching plunder to me to be honest (you should be angry at your math teacher).

If someone really wants to create a new constant that is just twice as much as the previous one, then tau isn't really the best symbol for it in my opinion (it's rather widely used in many places for other things).

DoubleReed

United States4130 Posts

July 06 2011 11:30 GMT

#333

Did it ever occur to you that angles greater than 180 degrees are used considerably less often? So in terms of measuring angles, it's not so bad. How is that more intuitive anyway? Either way you have to understand the equation. Now it's just "tau radians" rather than "2pi radians" but it's still 6.28 radians or whatever. I don't see how this makes radian measure any better. If anything, I think it makes it uglier as pi/12 and pi/24 would be further broken down to tau/48, and it just makes these numbers way bigger and bulkier.

You try to make one thing pretty, it will make others ugly. There's no real point.

Bondator

Finland120 Posts

July 06 2011 12:38 GMT

#334

Here's something to consider.

This is cyrillic P:

This is cyrillic T (italic):

Forget Tau. 2pi should be called Ti. And it doesn't mean pi should be abandoned. There are already whole bunch of constants and whatnot widely used, that are just some other constants multiplied by even more constants. One such is Planck's constant and whatever h-bar is called:

$[image loading]$

Mazer

Canada1086 Posts

July 06 2011 15:33 GMT

#335

I firmly believe that anyone having trouble in understanding how radians work due to the 'confusion' that using pi brings will find using tau any easier.

EDIT: And this is not even remotely similar to making the switch to the metric system.

Zorgaz

Sweden2951 Posts

July 06 2011 15:41 GMT

#336

After reading this i agree that Tau seems easier and all, but it would take quite aloooooot of time and enforcement for it to become the new norm ^^.

scDeluX

Canada1341 Posts

July 06 2011 15:49 GMT

#337

On July 02 2011 11:44 iamho wrote:
Fuck no, tau has too many meanings already.

+ Show Spoiler +

Tau cross

On the subject I'd think both cause coexist and it would be up to the educational book writers to use what they want. I might be wrong tho as it could bring confusion and disparity in formulas used globally.

dogmeatstew

Canada574 Posts

July 06 2011 16:18 GMT

#338

I don't think it would be worth the effort to swap a constant for itself times two... it seems like way more effort than its worth.

If the vast majority of scenarios in which Pi was used involved multiplying it by two then maybe but as is its just going to add division everywhere instead of multiplication which really isn't better.

iansanew

New Zealand86 Posts

July 06 2011 16:21 GMT

#339

If tau isn't 3 times better than pi, i doubt it will become mainstream.

thoradycus

Malaysia3262 Posts

July 07 2011 12:45 GMT

#340

do you REALLY want tau?