{"id":3742,"date":"2012-06-28T12:06:11","date_gmt":"2012-06-28T16:06:11","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?p=3742"},"modified":"2013-01-21T20:51:26","modified_gmt":"2013-01-22T01:51:26","slug":"todays-big-controversy","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/06\/todays-big-controversy.html","title":{"rendered":"Today’s Big Controversy"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<\/head>

All week, I\u2019ve been looking forward to today, but I was mindful that it might be contentious and provoke rancor among my friends. \u00a0But, ultimately, truth is more important than partisanship, so, come what may, I want to wish you all a very happy Tau Day!<\/p>\nhttp:\/\/www.youtube.com\/watch?v=jG7vhMMXagQ<\/a>\n

As you may remember from math class, pi is approximately 3.14159 and, every year, on March 14th, math geeks tend to celebrate. \u00a0Pi is what you get when you divide a circle\u2019s circumference (the length around the outside) by the diameter (the length straight across. \u00a0And it\u2019s deucedly inconvenient.<\/p>\n

We don\u2019t normally define a circle in terms of its diameter<\/em>, we use its radius. \u00a0When you look at the ratio of a circumference to the radius you get tau = 6.283185\u2026. = 2*pi. \u00a0And that actually turns out to clean up a lot of the formulas and conventions you learned in trig. \u00a0Look back to the video above to see how radians go from being that weird conversion you have to keep using your TI-89 to double check to a totally intuitive way to talk about angles. \u00a0Pi takes you halfway around a circle (in radians, pi is equivalent to 180 degrees). \u00a0Tau is equivalent to 360 degrees so if you want to talk about half a circle, you\u2019re talking about tau\/2. \u00a0Three quarters round a circle is 3*tau\/4. \u00a0There\u2019s none of this 3*pi\/2 = 270 degrees nonsense (which I still had to look up to confirm, because it\u2019s not intuitive).<\/p>\n

For more examples and answers to pro-pi objections, you can check out the Tau Manifesto<\/a>, from which I\u2019ve excerpted the following.<\/p>\n

It makes no more sense to have a separate symbol for \u03c4\/2 than it does to have a separate symbol for 1\/2. Indeed, imagine we lived in a world where we used the letter h to represent \u201cone half\u201d and had no separate notation for 2h. We would then observe that h is ubiquitous in mathematics. In fact, 2h is the multiplicative identity, so how can one doubt the importance of h? But this is crazy: 2h is the fundamental number, not h. Let us therefore introduce a separate symbol for 2h; call it 1. We then see that h=1\/2, and there is no longer any reason to use h at all.<\/p>\n

This hypothetical scenario becomes reality in the case of circles: what is really going on here is that \u03c0 is half of something. We have a standard symbol (\u03c0) for half a \u201ccircular unit\u201d, but we have no standard symbol for the unit itself. Whether we use \u03c4 or some other symbol, the circular unit needs a name. If you ever hear yourself saying things like, \u201cSometimes \u03c0 is the best choice, and sometimes it\u2019s 2\u03c0\u201d, stop and remember the words of Vi Hart in her wonderful video about tau: \u201cNo! You\u2019re making excuses for \u03c0.\u201d It\u2019s time to stop making excuses.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

In other words:<\/p>\n

Tau: because the True is also the Beautiful<\/h2>\n<\/body><\/html>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All week, I\u2019ve been looking forward to today, but I was mindful that it might be contentious and provoke rancor among my friends. \u00a0But, ultimately, truth is more important than partisanship, so, come what may, I want to wish you all a very happy Tau Day! As you may remember from math class, pi is […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":127,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[34],"class_list":["post-3742","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized","tag-math"],"yoast_head":"\nToday's Big Controversy<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"All week, I've been looking forward to today, but I was mindful that it might be contentious and provoke rancor among my friends. \u00a0But, ultimately, truth\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/06\/todays-big-controversy.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Today's Big Controversy\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"All week, I've been looking forward to today, but I was mindful that it might be contentious and provoke rancor among my friends. \u00a0But, ultimately, truth\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/06\/todays-big-controversy.html\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Unequally Yoked\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2012-06-28T16:06:11+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2013-01-22T01:51:26+00:00\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Leah Libresco\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Leah Libresco\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"2 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/06\/todays-big-controversy.html\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/06\/todays-big-controversy.html\",\"name\":\"Today's Big Controversy\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/#website\"},\"datePublished\":\"2012-06-28T16:06:11+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2013-01-22T01:51:26+00:00\",\"author\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/#\/schema\/person\/17ee17592b35b40040d5f5f7ea5ab464\"},\"description\":\"All week, I've been looking forward to today, but I was mindful that it might be contentious and provoke rancor among my friends. \u00a0But, ultimately, truth\",\"breadcrumb\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/06\/todays-big-controversy.html#breadcrumb\"},\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"ReadAction\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/06\/todays-big-controversy.html\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"BreadcrumbList\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/2012\/06\/todays-big-controversy.html#breadcrumb\",\"itemListElement\":[{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":1,\"name\":\"Home\",\"item\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\"},{\"@type\":\"ListItem\",\"position\":2,\"name\":\"Today’s Big Controversy\"}]},{\"@type\":\"WebSite\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/#website\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/\",\"name\":\"Unequally Yoked\",\"description\":\"\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"SearchAction\",\"target\":{\"@type\":\"EntryPoint\",\"urlTemplate\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/?s={search_term_string}\"},\"query-input\":\"required name=search_term_string\"}],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\"},{\"@type\":\"Person\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/#\/schema\/person\/17ee17592b35b40040d5f5f7ea5ab464\",\"name\":\"Leah Libresco\",\"image\":{\"@type\":\"ImageObject\",\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.patheos.com\/blogs\/unequallyyoked\/#\/schema\/person\/image\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/20e1e6a3a94c4e7928687804a41d888d?s=96&d=mm&r=r\",\"contentUrl\":\"https:\/\/secure.gravatar.com\/avatar\/20e1e6a3a94c4e7928687804a41d888d?s=96&d=mm&r=r\",\"caption\":\"Leah Libresco\"},\"description\":\"Leah is the author of Arriving at Amen and Building the Benedict Option. 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