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03-14-2019 05:17 PM |
Pi Day is a lie: celebrate tau, the true circle constant instead
Today is Pi Day, perhaps the most popular of geeky holidays. Hooray. But I’m here to tell you that Pi Day is wrong — or rather, the entire idea of pi as a mathematical concept is wrong.
It’s easy enough to see why people like Pi Day: the whole thing starts with a mathematical pun of sorts (The date is written as 3/14 in American notation. Pi starts with the digits 3.14. You get it.) It’s an easy, fun ritual to see how many digits you can pointlessly memorize of the famously never-ending, never-repeating number (even though 39 digits is more than sufficient for almost any calculations you’ll ever need). Plus pi sounds like pie, and who doesn’t like pie?
Π AS A NUMBER IS BAD, AND THEREFORE, SO IS THE ENTIRE MISGUIDED DAY DEDICATED TO ITS CELEBRATION
But here’s the thing: π as a number is bad, and therefore, so is the entire misguided day dedicated to its celebration. It’s a lot to take in, and I, too, was once like you: I was taught the virtues of pi for years, going back to Pi Day parties in middle school. But instead of pi, we should celebrate tau, an alternative circle constant referred to by the Greek letter τ that equals 2π, or approximately 6.28.
I’m not just making this up out of nowhere: the terribleness of pi as a constant was first proposed by mathematician Bob Palais in his article “π Is Wrong!” and later expounded upon in The Tau Manifesto by Michael Hartl, which serves as the basis for modern tauism. (Internet-famed mathemusician Vi Hart is also a major proponent of tau over pi, if you prefer your mathematical arguments in a more entertaining video form.)
But Palais and Hartl’s arguments both boil down to some basic math. Step back in time to when you first learned geometry and recall the simple origins: no matter what circle you’re using, if you divide the circumference of the circle by the diameter, you’ll get the same answer: an endless number, starting with the digits 3.14159265... (aka pi).
And right there is the fundamental flaw. The thing is, we don’t actually use diameter to describe circles. We use the radius, or one-half the diameter. The circle equation uses the radius, the area of a circle uses the radius, and the fundamental definition of a circle — “the set of all points in a plane that are at a given distance from a given point, the center” — is based on the radius. Plugging that into our circle constant equation gives us a new circle constant equivalent to 2π, or 6.28318530717..., colloquially referred to with the Greek letter τ (tau). Switching to τ isn’t making some arbitrary change for the sake of it. It’s bringing one of the most important constants in math in line with how we actually do math.
(cont'd.) https://www.theverge.com/tldr/2018/3...-holiday-truth
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