Pi ain't all that

Tau is a far better circle constant that Pi, and this is explored in Vi Hart's video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG7vhMMXagQ
But does this make the formula for the area of a circle a little more ugly? Well, take a look at this video and make your own mind up.

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[ChristianNaversen]

OK, all this pi or tau stuff is pretty silly. Some equations look better with tau, some don't. The radius is most important in mathematics, the diameter is the most important in engeneering. To say that tau is superior to pi, or the other way around, is nitpicking! It so happens that using pi has been the convention for a long time, and there would be no real gain in change to tau now, just work. And isn't the number 2 just as beautiful as pi or tau? Either you divide or multiply by it? :)

[RobertDixonVideos]

@ChristianNaversen 2 is nice enough on its own, but why have two terms when you can combine it into one?

[veraphine]

No, really, tao is wrong. Sure, tao is better in SOME cases, but the only reason that this is so is because tao is a multiple of pi. Go google pi manifesto.

[RobertDixonVideos]

@veraphine I'm sorry, but you have it the wrong way round. Sure pi is better in one or two places (but mostly tau works better), this is because tau is the ratio of the RADIUS to the circumference. It makes a lot more sense mathematically, and I think that those who argue pi is better must surely be doing so because of an emotional attachment to it, and not as a result of rational consideration for the practicality of the two numbers.

[ZidaneIsTheMan]

Why have one pi when you can have two? Happy Tau Day everyone :-)

[nactan]

@ChristianNaversen the most important thing to mathematics is engineering? the fuck... who are you to determine the priorities of mathematics? suppose i said the priority of engineering is mathematical elegance? no structure should be built unless the calculations involved are mathematically interesting! (and accusations of NITPICKING... *gasp* how will i ever outlive the mortal shame???)

[ChristianNaversen]

@RobertDixonVideos My point is that converting from pi to tau is just a cosmetic transform to make some equations look better, equations that look pretty in the first place (at least I think they are pretty). Even if tau makes a bit more sense when measuring radians on a circle or tidy up a few more equations than it messes up, I really doubt that there would be any real gain when you look at the work you have to put in the convertion process.

[RobertDixonVideos]

@cladny Only due to convention, not because of any mathematical rule. The purpose of this video is to challenge these conventions.

[cladny]

@amethyst8teen I'm a mechanical engineer and I can say that dialogue concerning part specifications always involves the diameter as opposed to the radius.

[MirageScience]

Doesn't help torque which uses Tau as a variable, and it messes up the volume of a circle, and it messes up tangents, in particular inverse tangents. You could see all this on wikipedia by looking at pi and by googling equations with pi.

[amethyst8teen]

@veraphine I don't think I can take you seriously when you can't even spell it right. Your argument assumes that pi is the fundamental number and tau is just a variation of it (2pi). In actuality, tau is the fundamental number since it is the ratio of circumference to radius. Radius is what always gets used, not diameter.

[technicallyabsurd]

I was stuck for a while, wondering why pi worked so well as a circle constant (diameter over circumference) but not in practical equations, but you laid it down: it's the radius/circumference that yields tau, and the constant that should be used to make geometry and physics more elegant. Thanks!