# Happy pi day, beware tomorrow:::



## SeverinR (Mar 14, 2013)

happy Pi day, 3:14
Had a slice of Boston creme pie for lunch to celebrate.

Anyone named Ceasar should beware, and no one should trust anyone named Brutus tomorrow.

*BeWAre of the Ides of March!*


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## Sparkie (Mar 14, 2013)

Et Tu, SeverinR?


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## Devor (Mar 14, 2013)

I'll save my celebrating for Tau day, thank you very much.


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## Nihal (Mar 14, 2013)

Here, a bad pun for ya:








(I will never understand why do you put the month before the day... or imperial units, by the way.)


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## Steerpike (Mar 14, 2013)




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## Zero Angel (Mar 14, 2013)

Devor said:


> I'll save my celebrating for Tau day, thank you very much.



I don't understand all the love for tau.

What about Euler? What about the sum of the reciprocals of squares? 

What about Euler's Identity? That is, e ^ (_i_ pi) + 1 = 0
This is considered by many to be one of the most beautiful equations in mathematics, and you would sully it by having it be e ^ (_i_ tau / 2 ) + 1 = 0???


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## Zero Angel (Mar 14, 2013)

Steerpike said:


>



First time I saw that, my mind was blown. 

But it'd be nice if the pie had a tiny slice cut off to represent the rounding error in pi!


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## Devor (Mar 14, 2013)

Zero Angel said:


> I don't understand all the love for tau.
> 
> What about Euler? What about the sum of the reciprocals of squares?
> 
> ...



No, I'd only use Tau for the unit circle in High School.  Tau and Pi can stand side by side just fine, but that unit circle confuses so many people, and with Tau, then a quarter circle becomes Tau/4, which looks more like one fourth of a circle than Pi/2.  I like Tau because I think more people will pass Trig.

Tau, for those who don't know, is 2Pi.

Also, I was mostly just curious who would know what I was talking about.  Happy Pi day everyone.


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## Zero Angel (Mar 14, 2013)

Devor said:


> No, I'd only use Tau for the unit circle in High School.  Tau and Pi can stand side by side just fine, but that unit circle confuses so many people, and with Tau, then a quarter circle becomes Tau/4, which looks more like one fourth of a circle than Pi/2.  I like Tau because I think more people will pass Trig.
> 
> Tau, for those who don't know, is 2Pi.
> 
> Also, I was mostly just curious who would know what I was talking about.  Happy Pi day everyone.



We could just redefine radians to be based on a 1/2 circle instead of a unit circle? 

Oh! But somehow 360Â° is cool?  Maybe we should just teach *EVERYONE* radians. That way, it would be ubiquitous and people wouldn't have trouble remembering it because they wouldn't learn that a right angle is 90Â°, they would learn that it is π/2.

But again, Euler's Identity is based on the fact that π is a number of radians. This says if you go halfway around the unit circle in the complex plane and add 1, you get 0 as a result. 

e ^ (_i_ Θ) is equivalent to cos(Θ) + _i_sin(Θ) and describes any point on the unit circle in the complex plane. Thus, e ^ (_i_π) is the same as cos(π) + _i_sin(π) = -1 + 0_i_ = -1.

Thus, when we add 1, we get 0. Euler's Identity relates five of the most important mathematical constants in a single (unholy?) equation, but it's all based on radians.

Note: You really wouldn't believe some of the π hate / τ love in other areas of the Internet though...or maybe you would.

On a personal level and as an educator, I'd be a lot more inclined to get behind America to fully abandoning the British standard system of measurement along with the Fahrenheit scale


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## Androxine Vortex (Mar 14, 2013)

It's also save a spider day...no I'm serious.


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## Chilari (Mar 15, 2013)

Well it's the Ides of March now. Any important Romans should watch their backs.

Interesting Roman fact: the emperor Hadrian, who ordered the construction of that bit wall across the north of England, was incredibly popular in the provinces and amongst the legions. In Rome itself, though, he was hated. They didn't like that he spent so much time and money in the provinces. He had a big old expensive palace outside Rome at Tivoli. It's well worth a visit.


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