Thursday, December 9, 2010

"The Tau Manifesto"

Mark Chu-Carroll at his blog, "Good Math, Bad Math," often posts examples of mathematical 'crackpottery' that come his way, but recently posted about an argument for why everyone's favorite number π, should really be substituted with another value tau, τ, the equivalent of 2π, and why this would all make sense in so many ways (tau is based on the radius of a circle, instead of the diameter-basis for pi). And yes, it's a serious argument:

http://tauday.com/

Many agree with the logic and reasoning of the assertions in favor of 'tau,' but... well... changing centuries of routine use of pi (and making obsolete all those 'I Love π ' t-shirts) , is of course another matter altogether.

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