Pi is Wrong?

[Reincarnate]

Originally Posted by reuben_tate

I don't see why everyone is hating on her. She is just proposing another unit of measure that would be more convenient in certain circumstances. You wouldn't measure the length of your fingernail in kilometers, nor would you measure the distance between planets in millimeters. Similarly, this girl is just saying that in some cases, it would be easier to use tau. Would it be more convenient in all situations? Well no, but she has a good point in the fact that in some applications (like the examples she had shown), the use of tau might be more simple and also make more sense. I'm not taking sides or anything, I'm still going to stick with traditional pi, but I think this girl has some validity to her point.

not really

[Sweet_Feet]

Originally Posted by kommisar

I liked the process of her making actual pie, but here's what's wrong with it:


1.The pie dough she's using has either been made with brown sugar, made with added molasses or with cocoa. As she rolls it, you can tell that the dough is very fragile as it tears very easily. It's fine to make pie with such dough, but the process can become difficult and the overall product's consistency can be less flaky (which is usually what you aim for).

2.Using canned fruits and pie fillings is probably the worst things you can do for a quality pie. They're full of sodium nitrate for preservation which is used as an ingredient in fertilizers, pyrotechnics, as an ingredient in smoke bombs, etc. For maximum flavor, your filling must always be made from scratch using homemade jelly and local fruits.

3.For a better golden color, it's best to baste a light amount of melted butter on top of the pie before cooking. Otherwise, it may dry up too much and become stale. That simply won't do. Her toothpick pi and tau designs were neat, but hardly efficient for air circulation.

Cooks think she's retarded too.

Hahaha, easily the best read of the week for me. Well done.

[tofurox]

Originally Posted by Stewie7Griffin

The most interesting videos I've seen is Turning a Sphere Inside Out.

Part I
PartII

My brain hurts.

[Patashu]

MrRubix I like you but name one thing that would be more horrible under tau than under pi that is performed by high schoolers/college undergrads

Personally I LOVE 1 tau = 1 full turn, it is such a good pedagogical tool for teaching trig and radians

[Reincarnate]

I actually looked into this more deeply yesterday by playing around with some integral math, stat functions, and geometric formulations. I've actually backed down a bit from my stance and I do see how tau would make things easier to understand when it comes to the unit circle and other trig-based concepts. From a physics/statistics POV, tau makes things kinda ugly and doesn't give me any added intuition. Cauchy distributions and Gaussian densities don't become any cleaner and, if anything, become harder to intuit.

You might find tau easier to use with cylindrical shells, but more annoying where discs/washers are concerned, which are (arguably) used more often (and are more intuitive). Stuff like the volume of a sphere is made a bit prettier via (2/3)*tau*r^3, and periodicity of trig functions are simpler via sin(x+tau) = sin(tau) or cos(x+tau) = cos(x) but then you've got uglier stuff like tan(x + tau/2) = tan(x). Some features of complex analysis are easier but then again I rarely use that stuff.

All in all, it isn't really a huge deal to make the substitution where higher mathematics are concerned, and it may serve some benefit to beginners who are otherwise confused with a full circle being 2pi.

Otherwise, it basically comes down to 2pi and pi versus tau and tau/2. The former is prettier to me, personally.

[Calcium Deposit]

Why not use both tau and pi?

@Komissar
A lot more bakers lightly brush an egg mixture over the crust instead of butter.

[gattsta]

I thought it was pretty funny, Im good with math, i understand it and have no issues with it, lol. I know what she's doing is probably a joke, and it doesn't bug me, i know how to do math, not gonna rage at a joke

[kommisar]

Originally Posted by Calcium Deposit

Why not use both tau and pi?

@Komissar
A lot more bakers lightly brush an egg mixture over the crust instead of butter.

not if you're a poor college student like I was

though an egg/milk wash generally does work better, yes. touché.

[Patashu]

MrRubix, you now have the Correct stance about tau vs pi, thanks

[PlayTrumpet]

I wish I still took math classes. I'd love to mess with a professor by mixing tau and 2pi, etc. =P

They'd probably fail me though. -.-

And there are of course reasons and arguments on both sides, but luckily I don't have to care. ^_^

[reuben_tate]

Originally Posted by Calcium Deposit

Why not use both tau and pi?

@Komissar
A lot more bakers lightly brush an egg mixture over the crust instead of butter.

That sounds good. Use the one that nicely matches the circumstances.

[SocoNhydro420]

Its just about how things got started in the beginning, and gets passed down through the generations. Take religeon for example. Sometimes i wonder how can people believe that nonesense... But you have to remember as a kid your mind is vulnerable to ignorance and such things are inevitable. But thats another matter entirely.

As for the substitution, thats just what it is, a substitution. Nothing new. As a physicist we frequently define new variables and notation to stand for a pagefull of equations just to shorten things up. Einstein was the king of this with his summation notation, as well as Dirac with his state vector notation. Ill agree they make hard things more elegant and less cumbersome, but as for things that have been that way for thousands of years it will never, ever, change. (sad face)