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Comment on The pi is a lie… Happy Half Tau Day!parent

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No need to look so far. The area of a circle is πr^2. π without 2 is used everywhere.

But in analogous equations (energy of motion .5mv^2, energy of spring, .5kx^2), there is a 1/2. Basically, anytime you integrate a linear equation, you get a factor of 1/2. Using pi as the circle constant hides this fact.

http://tauday.com/#sec:circular_area

I like that it hides the fraction. I'm a computer scientist. I don't like fractions.

Instead of celebrating tau, we should be celebrating integers. Robust, fast, compact, reliable, easy to understand. With pi I can use more integers. Thank you pi!

Well, as a computer scientist, I'd hope you use pi * r * r, because there's no reason to compute tau/2 every time, and pow() is needlessly inefficient for integer powers (on all languages I know. ~6 times slower in python). I'd expect you to make the same optimizations with the analogous equations, but that shouldn't have any bearing on which constant is better for learning, etc.

I guess you must support legislation to make pi equal to 3, right?

You don't think celebrating integer day every day would get a bit repetitive?

Only the first 5 million years, then something interesting happens.

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