Wednesday, June 28, 2017

Pi vs. Tau

(Click on the comic if you can't see the full image.)

(C)Copyright 2017, C. Burke.

Would you rather have
Pi in the Sky or Tau in the Scow?




Come back often for more funny math and geeky comics.




2 comments:

Anonymous said...

What is Tau?

(x, why?) said...

Google is your friend.

But to save you the anguish of reading a "manifesto" or two: Tau is a Greek letter that comes a few after pi. The lowercase tau even looks like half a pi. Which is where it gets silly because tau = 2 pi.

Some mathematicians think pi isn't a good number to use because (when you get to Algebra 2 and Trig and beyond) you find yourself using 2 pi in many calculations. Are of these could be simplified, they say, if you let tau = 6.2831853071...

So Circumference would be tau * r, instead of 2 * pi * r. Area would be a pain in the butt.

However, the distance around the Unit Circle would be 1 tau, which is 2 pi, and that is used in a bunch of stuff that happens later on.

Think of a superior videogame system that no one buys because every has the popular one. The people who like the "superior" but unpopular one are the ones who like tau.

Hope this helps.