Pi v Tau

[Deltango Vale]

A year or so ago, there was a delightful thread that 'degenerated' into a war between pie and cake. Little did I know at the time that it was merely a precursor to a much greater battle. Well, the gloves are off and I can see this topic will dominate the fora for years to come. Child avis, pffft. Firestorm v V2, yawn. SL v FB, zzzzzzz. It's time to unleash Pi v Tau:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-13906169

[Dresden Ceriano]

I have to side with Kate Bush on this.

...Dres

[Storm Clarence]

2Pi is better than one.  

[Venus Petrov]

I prefer a dark piece of chocolate to roll around in my mouth.

[Deltango Vale]

I present to you the best chocolate to be found on planet Earth:

http://www.debauve-et-gallais.com/v1/shop/?lg=en

[Liisa Runo]

http://www.googlefight.com/index.php?lang=en_GB&word1=pi&word2=tau

Broccoli and cheese PI for me.

[Storm Clarence]

Appointed by the king of France?  1800's?  That's some pretty old and 'stale' chocolate, I would think.  

I will send some fresh chocolate.

[Venus Petrov]

Mmm...chocolate....

[Dillon Levenque]

How could this have happened? I've been deliberately lied to and misled my whole life! I feel used. And stupid.

Fie on pi!

[Void Singer]

all well and good, except they need a different name for their constant... Tau already has a definition... and it's NOT constant. =P

[Darrius Gothly]

Awww ... c'mon Void. You're enough of a geek to know that old saying:

"Variables won't, Constants aren't"

[Storm Clarence]

Osborn's Law echos the laws of programming: all constants are variables.

[Zippity Neutra]

So... if this tau is taking over the world, I won't have to deal with radians when relearning LSL? :smileytongue:

[Charolotte Caxton]

yay math!

is not pie?

no chockolatte?

nvm

[Void Singer]

yes, but programming geekery doesn't override my math geekery.

true story:
while in school I independently recreated the Sieve of Eratosthenes, by accident no less, to help with my homework, never having heard of it before... and went on to find two rules for primes before I learned about them (actually 1 rule, and a corollary I've never seen mentioned anywhere else).

I was a math geek before I was a programming geek, which is why it's so embarrassing to admit that rotations still give me headaches and I just memorize the formulas and not the math.

ETA:
yes, I'm aware of the irony, that in different fields of math, some symbols have different meanings, but tau is a basic geometry variable, and it wouldn't do to have two conflicting uses in the same field... it's an interesting idea, although I'm not sure that I agree with the premise, I just think it needs a different symbol

(a similar argument could be made the the circumference should be the base, giving constants for D and R of 0.3138 and 0.1592 respectively... but it's easier to measure a diameter or radius than a circumference)

[Deltango Vale]

Your homework assignment (and a prize of US$1 million):

http://www.claymath.org/millennium/Riemann_Hypothesis/

[Void Singer]

once upon a time I'd have taken a shot at that.... back before what I know now

namely, that not only have greater minds tried and failed using methods far beyond me; but they've also spent large portions of their life on it.

 

ps.
that corrolary I was talking about? given a linear series of prime numbers starting at the first (n[1] which is 2), and ending at n[x], the sieve method can reliably find all primes up to n[x+1]^2 which will be the first one it misidentifies as prime.... it's a consequence of the square law, but very useful in computing your maximum numerical value you can handle when building a list sieve on the fly. mathematically it's probably too inconsequential to note, but procedurally it's significant.

[Maryanne Solo]

Hmm... can I just have Quiche plz ^^ :smileysad: