Tau puns?

[Requia]

This will take some background, but I hope you'll bea with me:

A while back somebody proposed that pi is actually wrong, and that we replace it with a new variable equal to 2*pi. His symbol can't be entered on a computer, so last year somebody proposed that we use the greek letter Tau ([FONT=MathJax_Math]τ[/FONT].) instead.

Now, in an effort to break down the pi loyalists final remaining claim in their favor, he needed tau puns. Much of which invevitably ended up focusing on Tao, and I'm wondering if this is something horridly offensive or if it's ok with Taoists.

 

[wmjbyatt]

I find it terribly offensive, but mostly because pi isn't a variable, it's a constant. And I'm gonna need to read a paper or something before I can understand how pi can be wrong. It's a clearly defined ratio and the basis for huge amounts of mathematics. At the very least, dropping pi from the mathematical lexicon and replacing it with this tau would ruin Euler's equation of five. "e^(i(tau/2)) + 1 = 0" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

 

[Willamena]

I find it terribly offensive, but mostly because pi isn't a variable, it's a constant.

Haha!

There's your pun, Requia.

 

[Requia]

I find it terribly offensive, but mostly because pi isn't a variable, it's a constant. And I'm gonna need to read a paper or something before I can understand how pi can be wrong. It's a clearly defined ratio and the basis for huge amounts of mathematics. At the very least, dropping pi from the mathematical lexicon and replacing it with this tau would ruin Euler's equation of five. "e^(i(tau/2)) + 1 = 0" just doesn't have the same ring to it.

Pi and Tau are of course both constants.

As the simplest expression of the equation e^(ix)=cos(x)+i*sin(x), the simplified Euler's identity actually becomes e^(i*tau)=1.

Pi is not wrong not wrong in term of definition, but in terms of elegance. I'll let those more elegant than me explain. http://www.math.utah.edu/~palais/pi.pdf is the original proposal, No, really, pi is wrong: The Tau Manifesto by Michael Hartl | Tau Day, 2010 has its own writeup and is one of the two independent proposals to use tau instead of the unnamed symbol, and also has the puns.