No, pi is wrong: The Tau Manifesto

I am a graduate student, first-year, so I have a lot of problem sets to work on. I've been thinking about tau every so often since the last time this was posted here, and so every time I work a problem, I think to myself: would this be clearer if I used tau? And the answer is usually "no". Sometimes 2 is next to pi because of the natural reason appealed to in the tauifesto, and other times it's there…

I like the idea of Tau but "pi is wrong" is wrong. Pi is correct. The pitch for Tau is as a replacement for Pi. That it is more logical than Pi. Tau has an important lesson to tell: intuition is important and in many cases shifting things around so they're easier to create an intuitive understanding is often very trivial and boils down to aesthetic/representation choices. Claiming that "pi is wrong" is picking a fight that doesn't need to…

I thought about treating 2π as τ. In principle mental typography does not need new symbols, just a switch in perspective and alter simplifying rules. Just stop simplifying things like 2π/2 or or multiply by 2/2 if it makes more sense. But then you have slightly awkward formulas like (3×2π)/4 where you have to use multiplication sign.

I am totally convinced we should abandon the π religion in favor of the τ religion, but there is a very unfortunate choice of symbols that stands in the way of enlightenment: A visual inspection immediately proves that pi (the Greek symbol π) is equal to two taus (π = ττ) rather than the other way around (τ != ππ). One way out of this quagmire is to rename pi as tau and tau as pi? This way we can…