Pi Day
Pages: 12
Well, I can't believe no one has posted this yet, but
http://www.tauday.com/
Anyway, we ate Shepherd's Pie for dinner to celebrate the wrong day. (I made it in a rectangular casserole dish.)
https://www.google.com/search?q=shepherd%27s+pie
Next I suppose I'll have to wear the wrong color on St. Paddy's. (But I'll probably wear something blue anyway.)
http://www.tauday.com/
Anyway, we ate Shepherd's Pie for dinner to celebrate the wrong day. (I made it in a rectangular casserole dish.)
https://www.google.com/search?q=shepherd%27s+pie
Next I suppose I'll have to wear the wrong color on St. Paddy's. (But I'll probably wear something blue anyway.)
I really liked the whole manifesto, but this bit part made me laugh:
Good Work Duoas!
| Michael is ashamed to admit that he knows π to 50 decimal places—approximately 48 more than Matt Groening. To atone for this, he has now memorized 52 decimal places of τ. |
Good Work Duoas!
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I'd like to share an approximation of Pi I just learned about :
I, hereby proclaim this the nerdiest expression of all time.
[1] : http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=42%2F13.37
42/13.37 = 3.141... [1] |
I, hereby proclaim this the nerdiest expression of all time.
[1] : http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=42%2F13.37
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Someone is trying to replace PI cause fractions are hard to understand for beginners... There are already degrees for that.
Would love to see the US join the rest of the world and adopt the metric system before it's too late if it isn't already.
Would love to see the US join the rest of the world and adopt the metric system before it's too late if it isn't already.
| ezchgg wrote: |
|---|
| Would love to see the US join the rest of the world and adopt the metric system before it's too late if it isn't already. |
I'd also love to see the US:
put an 's' on the end of maths (I'm surprised you say you learn "math" but you don't say you learn "physic")
remember the 'u' in spellings (colour, favour, etc)
and stop using 'z's instead of an 's's
(although I don't really care too much about spellings, but when you make a spell checker [@MS] saying English UK why does it still use US anyway?)
use GMT/UTC instead of EST/PST/CST since nobody apart from the US knows what they mean
format the date in a uniform manor (I don't care if you use largest to smallest [yy/mm/dd] or what everyone else does and use smallest to largest [dd/mm/yy]... But please just order it instead of medium then smallest then largest [mm/dd/yy])
But sure... we'll start with one at a time shall we? XD
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| use GMT/UTC instead of EST/PST/CST since nobody apart from the US knows what they mean |
| MiiNiPaa wrote: |
|---|
| cough...[/small] CET / CEST / BST cough... |
That's precisely what I mean!
(I got my things from this http://wtyme.com/ustimezone.gif)
){kind=link}
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As I see it, there is nothing wrong at all with using a regional dialect of English in an international forum, as long as the rest of the English speaking world can comprehend it.
(Though it is amusing when the purveyors of the dialect believe that they are the true 'native speakers' of the language; therefore their bastardisations constitute the definitive guide to correct, 'non-awkward' usage of English. http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/lounge/124271/ )
(Though it is amusing when the purveyors of the dialect believe that they are the true 'native speakers' of the language; therefore their bastardisations constitute the definitive guide to correct, 'non-awkward' usage of English. http://www.cplusplus.com/forum/lounge/124271/ )
It's interesting the amount of potentially hot topics that LB throws into the mix, even if it's without meaning to.
But anyways I don't really care about the lingual differences after getting called racist for some reason by a number of people the last time I tried to state that English is supposed to be a singular language and therefore should really be unified.
But the thing with the time-zones really does bug me, mostly because you'll get a lot of streamers or such, that will say they're live every day this week at 5pm CET or something... And even though they'll have thousands of non-american viewers that one streamer can't make the effort to remember that and use GMT/UTC (which is a universal standard... hense Universal Time Code. And everyone should know what there UTC is anyway), and so thousands of non-american have trouble figuring out when on earth that is.
I remember waiting for the Yogscast Christmas stream and they where broadcasting from the US at a time that was stated in the US thing (and the Yogscast are British so I really don't understand why they did that), but there was quite a large debate in chat about when its going to start, and over 50% of the viewers where very disappointing when it was an hour later than expected because of this confusion.
Also the date going mm/dd/yy causes even worse confusion because there's no notation to specify that it's a US date. Firstly it just doesn't make sense having it out of order. The ISO standard for a date string is "yyyy-mm-ddThh:mmZ" or "yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm+hh:mm" which represents the date and time, with time being UTC0 or plus an offset. Granted the ISO standard is mostly for use of computers so that alphabetical sorting will sort by most recent. But AFAIK most other places use dd/mm/yy don't they? Which is still in an order.
With the mm/dd/yy format you could be almost a year out on your time when communicating with non-americans (unless the date happens to be above the 12th).
The metric system will also please the scientific community quite a bit I believe :D
There's a reason why we invent standards, and the US doesn't seem to want to use them.
But anyways I don't really care about the lingual differences after getting called racist for some reason by a number of people the last time I tried to state that English is supposed to be a singular language and therefore should really be unified.
But the thing with the time-zones really does bug me, mostly because you'll get a lot of streamers or such, that will say they're live every day this week at 5pm CET or something... And even though they'll have thousands of non-american viewers that one streamer can't make the effort to remember that and use GMT/UTC (which is a universal standard... hense Universal Time Code. And everyone should know what there UTC is anyway), and so thousands of non-american have trouble figuring out when on earth that is.
I remember waiting for the Yogscast Christmas stream and they where broadcasting from the US at a time that was stated in the US thing (and the Yogscast are British so I really don't understand why they did that), but there was quite a large debate in chat about when its going to start, and over 50% of the viewers where very disappointing when it was an hour later than expected because of this confusion.
Also the date going mm/dd/yy causes even worse confusion because there's no notation to specify that it's a US date. Firstly it just doesn't make sense having it out of order. The ISO standard for a date string is "yyyy-mm-ddThh:mmZ" or "yyyy-mm-ddThh:mm+hh:mm" which represents the date and time, with time being UTC0 or plus an offset. Granted the ISO standard is mostly for use of computers so that alphabetical sorting will sort by most recent. But AFAIK most other places use dd/mm/yy don't they? Which is still in an order.
With the mm/dd/yy format you could be almost a year out on your time when communicating with non-americans (unless the date happens to be above the 12th).
The metric system will also please the scientific community quite a bit I believe :D
There's a reason why we invent standards, and the US doesn't seem to want to use them.
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@ Everyone talking about time zones in the US: Could we focus on the important stuff and get rid of "Day Light Savings Time" first? PLEASE? After that I'm open to suggestions. As an American, I really don't care what you call something since names are fungible and I'm probably just going to look it up anyway. But tell me, in what pants-on-head-psychotic-world does this map make any sense? : http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daylight_saving_time#/media/File:DaylightSaving-World-Subdivisions.png
Maybe we could talk about the original topic?
Did anyone read the entire manifesto?
Did anyone read the entire manifesto?
@ TheIdeasMan: Yes, in fact it's not a new concept. Do you remember Indeterminate Algebra, like polynomials and all of that crap? If you had some equation like '3X ( 4 + 2X)' and you just arbitrarily replaced '2X' with some symbol, like a smiling black guy, so now your equation looks like this: '3X (4 + ☻)'. Would your answer be the same? Would it be correct? Because that's essentially what that site is proposing and that is why 'Tau' doesn't work. Duoas is a teacher by trade, he posted it as a joke. Hence the reference to wearing the wrong color colour on St. Paddy's day and calling it blue (the wrong colour to wear is green of course :P).
| you just arbitrarily replaced '2X' with some symbol, like a smiling black guy, so now your equation looks like this: '3X (4 + ☻)'. |
1.5☻(4 + ☻) if you did substitution correctly. And when you solve this for ☻, you will get correct result (for ☻) and you can even substitute 2X back after that and finish solve for X and get correct result as if you were solving for X from the beginning.Substitution is one of the main approaches for solving simultaneous equations after all.
Substituting Tau for 2 Pi would work if substitution was done correctly, as calculating something in Imperial instead of Metric would work just fine, providing all conversions are done correctly.
My argument was more to the effect that it is wrong because it isn't finished yet. With polynomials the objective was usually to reduce the equation as much as you can, without consideration of the variables value.
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Alas, while my posting was meant as a joke, the tau issue is, at core, not a joke.
But first, there are a few misconceptions here that need help:
(1) Units
Units are not part of the problem. Pi (and Tau) are unitless quantities. We may speak of 90 degrees or whatever, but such things only obscure the mathematics more. Pi (and Tau) are a ratio of the same unit.
(2) Unified language
There is no "true" form of a widely-used language, even of English. A language -- any language -- is composed of idioms shared by a specific cohort. Hence the reasons some found the use of "doubt" to be dubious. It is well-known that within any language there are dialects among speakers. For any one speaker to stand up and proclaim his dialect superior due to any reason, even age, is often just pompous pretense.
That the likes of Oxford and Webster (and people like MLA and APA) spend time codifying language only hints at the very real need to standardize/standardise in specific contexts where people from different idiomatic backgrounds may need to communicate clearly and professionally. Anciently in England, this was done by speaking French.
UK vs American English, in particular, were purposefully separated by efforts led by Webster -- whose dictionaries are world known -- in an effort to take an American ownership of our dialect, mostly for pedagogical and some political reasons. Some good places to start reading about it are:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Webster
http://www.merriam-webster.com/info/noah.htm
(3) Daylight Savings Time
There are actually valid reasons for the observance of DST. The fact that not everyone agrees, and that it has historical and political signficance is enough to cause some modern mapping convolutions.
http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/
(4) The USA doesn't buck all your standards
Standards exist because of precedent. The US never decided to be obtuse and refuse to use the EU's modern metric standards.
The fact is that the USA is both physically and economically larger than all the EU put together, and is a powerhouse on the world stage. The cost of throwing out all extant standards -- retooling, education, propaganda, support for existing infrastructure, etc -- simply overwhelms the benefits of going purely metric right now.
That said, there are things in play to encourage metrication in the US. And really, the idea that the USA eschews things metric is nonsense if you think about it. It doesn't matter what industry you are in, there are things SI in use.
More reading:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/why-us-not-on-metric-system.htm
(4) Substitutions and conversions
As pi and tau are unitless, there are no conversions to be made.
Suggest to me an equation that needs you to solve with pi and not 2π. (The "manifesto" suggests a good number of them already -- and shows where it is a convolution of 2π.)
You cannot mess up any calculation or equation by using т instead of 2π.
(5) Pedagogy
The original papers suggesting we use [tau] instead of pi are pedagogical. The fact is that pi is a stupid number, because it only represents half a circle and throws an extra level of confusion into the mix.
If the "manifesto" had been read, even if you disagree with it, the points are valid. Everyone struggles with understanding how to use pi -- it is the one major sticking point in learning trigonometric (and related geometric) principles. Tau untangles it by getting rid of the idea that somehow the constant 2π is composed of two different pieces: 2 and π, and prevents simplification errors where the student unknowingly (and incorrectly) tries to get rid of that 2, leading to less simple problems. We're talking anti-obfuscation here.
Read the "manifesto" -- all this is made plain.
The purpose is to fix a historical pedagogical accident, and to do so in a way that does not complicate anything that anyone else has ever done with pi -- except maybe memorize a gazillion digits.
More interesting reading:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/let-s-use-tau-it-s-easier-than-pi/
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3481
http://xkcd.com/1292/
(6) Wait... you're serious about this?
Why not? It makes more sense to use tau, and, despite the FUD floating around, doesn't affect anything in any horrible, grotesque way. Go ahead, post Euler's equation. Post stuff about name conflicts. Post anything you like. It'll just show you are a dogmatist who didn't even bother to read the "manifesto" to see how stupid it is to defend poor, defenseless pi with such nonsense "rebuttals".
The fact is, in terms of doing work, it doesn't matter which you prefer. Pick the one you like.
In terms of learning the material and dealing with the math(s), tau is easier to grok with no downside. And, oddly enough, people have been doing it for years anyway. So, yeah, get a life. I'm sure we'll see the trolling from those it bothers too much to let be.
blue vs green
PS. Good job catching the "wrong" color is green. St Patrick has always been associated with blue, never green. However, modern associations, including those encouraged by official Irish cultural centers, are green.
So the joke really was that there was a "wrong" color. Blue, Green, Orange -- pick one and enjoy. (Just watch out for people who like to pinch.)
Y'all might also consider that the St. Paddy's joke is a commentary on the Pi vs Tau stuff. (In case that sailed over yer heads.)
PPS. I can't stand the month-day-year ordering. I always write dates as YYYY-MM-DD for my own (unambiguous) purposes, and otherwise write with the month name or abbreviation unless otherwise restricted.
2015-03-18
Mar 3, 2015
Anyway, enjoy the randomness! This should be fun!
But first, there are a few misconceptions here that need help:
(1) Units
Units are not part of the problem. Pi (and Tau) are unitless quantities. We may speak of 90 degrees or whatever, but such things only obscure the mathematics more. Pi (and Tau) are a ratio of the same unit.
(2) Unified language
There is no "true" form of a widely-used language, even of English. A language -- any language -- is composed of idioms shared by a specific cohort. Hence the reasons some found the use of "doubt" to be dubious. It is well-known that within any language there are dialects among speakers. For any one speaker to stand up and proclaim his dialect superior due to any reason, even age, is often just pompous pretense.
That the likes of Oxford and Webster (and people like MLA and APA) spend time codifying language only hints at the very real need to standardize/standardise in specific contexts where people from different idiomatic backgrounds may need to communicate clearly and professionally. Anciently in England, this was done by speaking French.
UK vs American English, in particular, were purposefully separated by efforts led by Webster -- whose dictionaries are world known -- in an effort to take an American ownership of our dialect, mostly for pedagogical and some political reasons. Some good places to start reading about it are:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Noah_Webster
http://www.merriam-webster.com/info/noah.htm
(3) Daylight Savings Time
There are actually valid reasons for the observance of DST. The fact that not everyone agrees, and that it has historical and political signficance is enough to cause some modern mapping convolutions.
http://www.webexhibits.org/daylightsaving/
(4) The USA doesn't buck all your standards
Standards exist because of precedent. The US never decided to be obtuse and refuse to use the EU's modern metric standards.
The fact is that the USA is both physically and economically larger than all the EU put together, and is a powerhouse on the world stage. The cost of throwing out all extant standards -- retooling, education, propaganda, support for existing infrastructure, etc -- simply overwhelms the benefits of going purely metric right now.
That said, there are things in play to encourage metrication in the US. And really, the idea that the USA eschews things metric is nonsense if you think about it. It doesn't matter what industry you are in, there are things SI in use.
More reading:
http://science.howstuffworks.com/why-us-not-on-metric-system.htm
(4) Substitutions and conversions
As pi and tau are unitless, there are no conversions to be made.
Suggest to me an equation that needs you to solve with pi and not 2π. (The "manifesto" suggests a good number of them already -- and shows where it is a convolution of 2π.)
You cannot mess up any calculation or equation by using т instead of 2π.
(5) Pedagogy
The original papers suggesting we use [tau] instead of pi are pedagogical. The fact is that pi is a stupid number, because it only represents half a circle and throws an extra level of confusion into the mix.
If the "manifesto" had been read, even if you disagree with it, the points are valid. Everyone struggles with understanding how to use pi -- it is the one major sticking point in learning trigonometric (and related geometric) principles. Tau untangles it by getting rid of the idea that somehow the constant 2π is composed of two different pieces: 2 and π, and prevents simplification errors where the student unknowingly (and incorrectly) tries to get rid of that 2, leading to less simple problems. We're talking anti-obfuscation here.
Read the "manifesto" -- all this is made plain.
The purpose is to fix a historical pedagogical accident, and to do so in a way that does not complicate anything that anyone else has ever done with pi -- except maybe memorize a gazillion digits.
More interesting reading:
http://www.scientificamerican.com/article/let-s-use-tau-it-s-easier-than-pi/
http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=3481
http://xkcd.com/1292/
(6) Wait... you're serious about this?
Why not? It makes more sense to use tau, and, despite the FUD floating around, doesn't affect anything in any horrible, grotesque way. Go ahead, post Euler's equation. Post stuff about name conflicts. Post anything you like. It'll just show you are a dogmatist who didn't even bother to read the "manifesto" to see how stupid it is to defend poor, defenseless pi with such nonsense "rebuttals".
The fact is, in terms of doing work, it doesn't matter which you prefer. Pick the one you like.
In terms of learning the material and dealing with the math(s), tau is easier to grok with no downside. And, oddly enough, people have been doing it for years anyway. So, yeah, get a life. I'm sure we'll see the trolling from those it bothers too much to let be.
blue vs green
PS. Good job catching the "wrong" color is green. St Patrick has always been associated with blue, never green. However, modern associations, including those encouraged by official Irish cultural centers, are green.
So the joke really was that there was a "wrong" color. Blue, Green, Orange -- pick one and enjoy. (Just watch out for people who like to pinch.)
Y'all might also consider that the St. Paddy's joke is a commentary on the Pi vs Tau stuff. (In case that sailed over yer heads.)
PPS. I can't stand the month-day-year ordering. I always write dates as YYYY-MM-DD for my own (unambiguous) purposes, and otherwise write with the month name or abbreviation unless otherwise restricted.
2015-03-18
Mar 3, 2015
Anyway, enjoy the randomness! This should be fun!
| (1) Units Units are not part of the problem. Pi and Tau are unitless quantities. We may speak of 90 degrees or whatever, but such things only obscure the mathematics more. Pi and Tau are a ratio of the same unit. |
I never said they were a different unit (assuming you are talking to me cause i'm the only one that talked about degrees). Switching from Pi to Tau will only obscure it more. I only mentioned degrees because in the video he said that Tau makes it easier for beginners who don't know fractions by simplifying the fractional part such that the top value is always 1 and makes it a bit easier to tell if one radian (from the 4-5) is greater than the other. This isn't even really a significant benefit, for anyone other than beginners who have a hard time understanding how fractions work. I learnt what a degree was before i even knew what radians or Pi was. The main benefit of it being fraction is that when doing computations. If you have 1/3 for example. You now simply say your answer is 0.3333333 and that answer may be good for your calculator. When someone else needs to use the same result but they need more precision, if it was left in the form 1/3 then that person could simply calculate it to whatever digit they needed. Pi is a known quantity whose value can be calculated. It doesn't matter when doing those calculations if the angle for 30 degrees is a nice fraction like Tau/12. Changing from Pi to Tau would not benefit anyone, simply create a rift in knowledge of those that know Tau and those that only know Pi. There is no benefit here except maybe instead of first teaching students Degrees and ease them into Radians when they understand the concepts with degrees, they will instead use Tau.
| You cannot mess up any calculation or equation by using т instead of 2π. |
Not even human error? I think you could still mess up a calculation or equation even with Tau. Or rather i think you meant to say, using Tau does not have the same problems as 2Pi because some people get confused by the 2.
| The fact is, in terms of doing work, it doesn't matter which you prefer. Pick the one you like. |
What happened to "such things only obscure the mathematics more".
I only skimmed through the longer video and it seemed all he was doing was really showing that every equation out there that uses Pi is compatible with Tau. Whether one or the other is easier is subjective. I've never had any problems using Pi so i doubt Tau will make things any easier for me. Actually it'll be worse cause i'd have to memorize a lot of the formulas with Tau. If not just compute them from the Pi equivalent equations each time i need them myself. Either way it would be harder to use Tau for me.
| The fact is that the USA is both physically and economically larger than all the EU put together |
Not quite right.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_%28PPP%29
Duous, you mentioned Daylight Savings in terms of "valid reasoning." I would disagree. In fact, that "change over" for summer happens to be the day with the most workplace accidents: http://www.reliableplant.com/Read/17749/workplace-injuries-rise-after-switch-to-daylight-savings
It's not even a cheap cost: the workplace accidents, sluggishness, and other things result in possibly a $434 million cost. http://sleepbetter.org/Lost-Hour-Economic-Index/
So yeah, I don't care if it makes summer longer- it's expensive, and killing people.
It's not even a cheap cost: the workplace accidents, sluggishness, and other things result in possibly a $434 million cost. http://sleepbetter.org/Lost-Hour-Economic-Index/
So yeah, I don't care if it makes summer longer- it's expensive, and killing people.
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