Happy Pi Day...March 14th

dl324

Joined Mar 30, 2015
16,846
Every Pi Day, I think of the last company I worked at. On Pi Day, they used to give out free pieces of pie while they lasted (probably only at my site). I never got any because I chose to work instead of waiting in line for free pie...
 

bogosort

Joined Sep 24, 2011
696
Am I the only one who gets unreasonably cranky that people consider March 14 "π day"? I mean, 3.14 is a rational number, for chrissakes.

Have I gone full-on curmudgeon?
 

wayneh

Joined Sep 9, 2010
17,496
Am I the only one who gets unreasonably cranky that people consider March 14 "π day"? I mean, 3.14 is a rational number, for chrissakes.
True, but time is continuous and there is some point during pi day that is arbitrarily as close to pi as you want to get. You can't celebrate an instant, which is far too early in the morning anyway, so might as well enjoy the entire day.
Have I gone full-on curmudgeon?
Quite possibly. Need more data. ;)
 

cmartinez

Joined Jan 17, 2007
8,220
A little history about this momentous day:

https://abcnews.go.com/US/happy-pi-day-indiana-define-pi-32-bill/story?id=61644614

Goodwin tried to popularize his theories, with little luck, until 1897, when he convinced the Indiana State Legislature to take up his cause.
Taylor I. Record introduced what became known as Indiana Bill No. 246: "A bill for an act introducing a new mathematical truth and offered as a contribution to education to be used only by the State of Indiana free of cost by paying royalties whatever on the same."
 

crutschow

Joined Mar 14, 2008
34,285
I agree that we should us Tau instead of Pi since it's 2Pi that is used in virtually all equations involving Pi (two notable exceptions being the relation between a circle's diameter-circumference and radius-area, of course).
 

xox

Joined Sep 8, 2017
838
I agree that we should us Tau instead of Pi since it's 2Pi that is used in virtually all equations involving Pi (two notable exceptions being the relation between a circle's diameter-circumference and radius-area, of course).
The first doesn't count though since it has to appear in the very definition of itself.

The second one is due to a chance cancellation of terms. Notice the formula for the area of a triangle:

Area = (1/2 Base * Height)

Translate that to a circle and you get:

Area = Tau * (1/2 Radius * Radius)

So a good example of why Pi should be abandoned in the first place. It just obscures the underlying meaning of certain equations.
 
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xox

Joined Sep 8, 2017
838
Hey, just noticed another one. The Riemann zeta function evaluted at even real indexes yields formulas usually expressed in terms of Pi:

zeta(2) = Pi^2 / 6
zeta(4) = Pi^4 / 90

Now look what happens when we use Tau instead:

zeta(2) = Tau^2 / 24
zeta(4) = Tau^4 / 1440
zeta(6) = Tau^6 / 60480

It just so happens that the denominator turns out to be OEIS sequence A276595!
 
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