Re:The pi is a lie… Happy Half Tau Day!
by anonymoushn on Monday March 14, 2011 @11:36AM
(#2322883)
Electrons exhibiting negative charge is something that would be difficult to fix because the fix would result in a lot of confusion. Using tau as the circle constant doesn't cause nearly as many problems. I don't see it as a joke; we should do it.
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It strikes me as more analogous to using j = sqrt(-1) so that it doesn't conflict with current: it works fine, but you're never going to get everyone to do it because people want the papers to stay consistent.
Actually, in this case, there's a particular discipline that's especially inconvenienced (physicists, due to the torque conflict). Contrast with j: there's a particular discipline that benefits, and they use j=sqrt(-1) all the time.
As a side note, to a physicist j = sqrt(-1) is also a conflict because we're used to i, j, and k being quaternions.