Pi is wrong!

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JL235	Created : 24 November 2010 Edited : 24 November 2010 Pi is wrong! We should be using Tau instead https://tauday.com/
Have you ever written the constant 'PI_2 = PI2'* (or similar) in your apps? That's because we typically want to work with whole circles, not half circles, so why not do this as standard? Using Pi just doesn't make sense. Tau = 2Pi Tau naturally expresses most concepts involving angles and circles better then Pi. 2PiR can be expressed as just TauR. The angle of quarter of a circle can be expressed as Tau/4 (much more natural) rather then Pi/2. From now on I will always be using Tau instead of Pi as standard. \|edit\| Changed 'PI_2 = PI' to 'PI_2 = PI*2'. d'oh! \|edit\|

Comments
Wednesday, 24 November 2010, 04:50
Jayenkai	shrugs I learned Pi, trying to change now would be just as god damned fucking frustrating as those stupid bloody "Radians", which are "supposed" to be better.
Wednesday, 24 November 2010, 04:55
CodersRule	While you go out and get all the textbooks changed, I'll sit back with a cup of tea and recite my 46 digits.
Wednesday, 24 November 2010, 05:10
Mog	View on YouTube
Wednesday, 24 November 2010, 05:43
JL235	But if you really think about it, using Tau instead does make sense! If you take a look at the figure showing the values of Tau around a circle, 1/4 circle == 1/4 Tau, it just makes perfect sense.
Wednesday, 24 November 2010, 07:56
steve_ancell	I think I will stick with 3.14 or my f-ing head will go bang!
Thursday, 25 November 2010, 06:03
j\\'ordos	Yay someone else dislikes radians too! I felt so alone <3
Thursday, 25 November 2010, 06:29
JL235	The radian has not changed; Tau is also based on radians. If anything I think Tau does the opposite to disliking them. It makes working with radians simpler then using Pi, and as a result moves radians closer to the mainstream. If I ever have children I will be insisting they learn trigonometry using Tau rather then Pi.
Thursday, 25 November 2010, 08:33
steve_ancell	JL235 If I ever have children I will be insisting they learn trigonometry using Tau rather then Pi. Even better to teach both methods, that way they'll know the difference between the two and understand why one is better than the other.
Saturday, 04 December 2010, 04:17
mindstorm8191	I remember a lame joke a teacher told us in school. This kid comes home and his dad says "what did you learn in school today?" The kid says "Pi-r-squared." His dad says "that's crazy, pie aren't squared, pie are round!" ha,ha,.... ha,ha ha...ha
Saturday, 04 December 2010, 19:57
Scherererer	Wrong. What if I want area? Then it's pir^2. It wouldn't make sense to use (Tau/2)r^2. The bottom line is that it's a constant, that's it. No matter which one you picked it is still going to cause problems. We could pick pi to be 2 (we'll call this ip for the sake of no confusion), for instance; then we would just have to do to get the circumference is 3.14ipr Same problem, different flavors. I could also argue that the metric units for volts and amps are terrible choices because it requires multiplying seemingly arbitrary constants of epsilon not all over the place (8.854187817...×10(8722)12 A·s/(V·m)) instead of picking units such that the integer values can be manipulated in laws such as coulomb's law without having to use such constants. These are standards, we have to deal with them
Sunday, 05 December 2010, 07:15
CodersRule	I'll have to use ip now. My teacher will be all like "What's this pi*r^ip thing?"
Sunday, 05 December 2010, 08:04
JL235	Scherererer Wrong. What if I want area? Then it's pir^2. It wouldn't make sense to use (Tau/2)r^2. There are more equations that use 2Pi then Pi on it's own. So the majority of the equations are simplified. The point isn't however to have a different constant. It's that because Tau relates to a whole circle it's much simpler as a concept to learn and understand then Pi. A good example are figures 7 and 8 on the Tau Manifesto linked above; it's just much simpler then using Pi as shown in figure 6. \|edit\| Also Tau is the relationship between the circumference of a circle to it's radius, it's not a random value like picking '2'. \|edit\|.
Friday, 01 April 2011, 21:15
JL235	Some people laughed when I first brought up Tau. This testimonial disagrees!

Tau = 2Pi

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