Live data from Hacker News

Happy Tau Day

tauday.com

71–80 of 128 posts

Re: Happy Tau Day

#71

It's just the same useless argument every year. Just use what you want. I've been taught pi since secondary school. I understand it well and can use it effectively. Never have I sat there and thought, "if only there was a shortcut to multiplying this by 2". There's whole sites, videos and movements to get tau popular. I just personally don't understand the point.

That's exactly the issue. You are thinking in terms of pi, so it might be hard to see from a different perspective. It's like using a slightly off abstraction for a concept. At first you have to make a small effort to hold it in your head, then at some point it's committed and you can manipulate the concept directly.

Let x be a randomly chosen real number in [0,1]. What does it mean to "manipulate x's concept" or "think in terms of x"?

Do these phrases attach themselves to the real number, or to the expression language? If the latter, do you say two number-expressions are equivalent if applying some normalization function yields two equal expressions? Do you consider two number-expressions distinct if they evaluate to the same real number, but cannot directly be related to each other?

For example, let:

    S = { (x, e^(ix) + 1) | x in R, x > 0 },
    T = { x | (x,y) in S, y = 0 },
    c1 = min(T),
    c2 =  6 * sqrt(sum(n^-2, n > 0))
If my memory's right, c1 and c2 evaluate to the same real number which happens to be equal to Pi. What does it mean to manipulate c1's concept or think in terms of it? Does c1 have the same concept as Pi?

Re: Happy Tau Day

#72
post #43

Okay, tau is a little better. Meanwhile, millions of lines of code are written in languages with no type system to speak of, millions of Americans use imperial measurements, billions worldwide speak languages that are inefficient and ambiguous, and many many people aren't even educated enough to know about pi or tau. We have much more damaging problems than multiplying by 2. Given the gigantic amount of effort it wou…

> millions of Americans use imperial measurements There are two types of countries: those using 'metric' units, and those who have been to the Moon. There's absolutely nothing fundamentally wrong with standard units (indeed, they are better for concrete manipulation). One can do science and engineering just as well with grains as with grams, with cups as with litres, with inches as with centimetres. They could do wit…

This would be entirely missing the point of my argument.

Re: Happy Tau Day

#73

If mathematics has a bikeshed, this is it. I enjoy the ridiculousness of it all, but people who consider this anything other than a well-executed joke really should get a hold of themselves.

Mathematics has no shortage of bikesheds.

Re: Happy Tau Day

#74
post #69

I'd rather multiply by 2 75% of the time than divide by 2 25% of the time (just a wild-ass guess of how often one or the other appear in common equations)

It's probably closer to 98% and 2% of the time for serious math, engineering, and physics.

Re: Happy Tau Day

#75
post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It gets worse! When using solid angles over a sphere, you're still going to need to use 2Tau steradians to cover a sphere. This factor of 2 will continue to cause confusion for the Tau fans. Therefore we must also define a new constant Sigma = 4pi so we can cleanly and easily deal with steradians. Anybody up for writing the Sigma Manifesto?

Does it help the pedagogy and understanding? Does it help form equations that match the form of other equations in some mathematically-meaningful way? Then, yes, I'd support it just fine. So the sarcasm fails. One of the other things I don't see mentioned very often in this discussion is that mathematics evolves . We almost never get it right the first time. The original Maxwell's Equations were 20 equations, rather…

>Does it help the pedagogy and understanding? Does it help form equations that match the form of other equations in some mathematically-meaningful way?

Absolutely! In 3D systems. Particularly using spherical coordinates.

It's ironic you chose Maxwell's Equations as your example because Sigma would get rid of those pesky factors of 4pi appearing in them when written in Gaussian units!

Besides, Maxwell's Equations are really best represented as just one equation when expressed in covariant form.

Re: Happy Tau Day

#76
i totally suck at math, however i think i know what is a circle, i can draw one with a compas. then i think i know what is the diameter of this circle, i can draw it by drawing two more circles and a line with a ruler. because a mathematician told me that the product of this diameter by a number is the circumference of the first circle i believe him, but if another mathematician ask me to draw two more circles and another line to define the same circumference... i will probably believe that the first one suck less than the second one at maths! (sorry for my english!).

Re: Happy Tau Day

#77

If mathematics has a bikeshed, this is it. I enjoy the ridiculousness of it all, but people who consider this anything other than a well-executed joke really should get a hold of themselves.

You're right about the bikeshedness, but that doesn't mean there isn't a clearly better bike shed design. I also find that these sorts of inefficiencies/inelegances compound. One or two are trivial, but when you have 30 of them, suddenly the mental tax becomes noticeable.

Furthermore, the cost falls mostly on the students, while the experts have already paid it and don't see the need to worry about it anymore.

Re: Happy Tau Day

#78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My favorite example of why τ is the true circle constant is actually the equation A = 1/2 τ r^2. It fits the usual quadratic form and shows how circumference and area relate: c = dA/dr = τ r and so A = ∫ c dr = ∫ τ r dr = 1/2 τ r^2. At first glance those 1/2s seem superfluous and like it would be nicer to just have a 2 in the other terms, but the 1/2 shows that differentiation and integration with respect to r are ha…

Reminds me of Taylor series. The factorial terms eluded me for so long until I realized it was a cancelling factor for accumulated derivation of polynomials. Now there's this link in my mind between powers / derivation / factorials.

What polynomials are being derived, and from what premises? Are you thinking of how to derive series solutions to differential equations or something? I'm unclear on what you're getting at here.

(Or, oh: did you mean "differentiation" when you said "derivation"? That would fit what you've said. Sorry for the pedantic post; I'll just leave this here in case anyone else is confused.)

Re: Happy Tau Day

#79

Using tau would uglify euler's equation, wouldn't it?

You be the judge of that. Compare

    e^(iπ) = -1
to

    e^(iτ) = 1.
The whole business of re-writing the identity as

    e^(iπ) + 1 = 0
is nothing but a hack to get around the weirdness of π as a constant.

Re: Happy Tau Day

#80

If mathematics has a bikeshed, this is it. I enjoy the ridiculousness of it all, but people who consider this anything other than a well-executed joke really should get a hold of themselves.

Really? This seems very similar to problems with variable naming and magic numbers, which are far from bike shedding.
Post reply on HN