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Mathematicians Want to Say Goodbye to Pi
By Natalie Wolchover, Life's Little Mysteries Staff Writer
29 June 2011 12:49 PM ET

"I know it will be called blasphemy by some, but I believe that pi is wrong."

That's the opening line of a watershed essay written in 2001 by mathematician Bob Palais of the University of Utah. In "Pi is Wrong!" Palais argued that, for thousands of years, humans have been focusing their attention and adulation on the wrong mathematical constant.

Two times pi, not pi itself, is the truly sacred number of the circle, Palais contended. We should be celebrating and symbolizing the value that is equal to approximately 6.28 — the ratio of a circle's circumference to its radius — and not to the 3.14'ish ratio of its circumference to its diameter (a largely irrelevant property in geometry).

Last year, Palais' followers gave the new constant, 2pi, a name: tau. Since then, the tau movement has steadily grown, with its members hoping to replace pi as it appears in textbooks and calculators with tau, the true idol of math. Yesterday — 6/28 — they even celebrated Tau Day in math events worldwide.

But is pi really "wrong"? And if it is, why is tau better?

The mathematicians aren't saying that pi has been wrongly calculated. Its value is still approximately 3.14, as it always was. Rather they argue that 3.14 isn't the value that matters most when it comes to circles. Palais originally argued that pi should be changed to equal (approximately) 6.28 while others prefer giving that number a new name altogether.

Beyond wrote: So whats the big deal about Pi

neufer wrote:Mathematically, π/2 or π/4 or (π-3) really make the most sense:

Beyond wrote:
Even with the picture, it's still all Greek to me

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cylinder_seal wrote:

Mesopotamian limestone cylinder seal and impression —worship of Shamash, (Louvre).

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<<A cylinder seal is a cylinder engraved with a 'picture story', used in ancient times to roll an impression onto a two-dimensional surface, generally wet clay. Cylinder seals were invented around 3500 BC in the Near East, at the contemporary site of Susa in south-western Iran and at the early site of Uruk in southern Mesopotamia. They are linked to the invention of the latter cuneiform writing on clay cylinders. They were used as administrative tool, jewelry and as magical amulets, later versions would employ notations with Mesopotamian hieroglyphs. In later periods, they were used to notarize or attest to multiple impressions of clay documents. Graves and other sites housing precious items such as gold, silver, beads, and gemstones often included one or two cylinder seals, as honorific grave goods.

The seal itself was made from hard stone, glass, or ceramics such as Egyptian faience. Many varieties of material such as hematite, obsidian, steatite, amethyst and carnelian were used to make cylinder seals, but lapis lazuli was especially popular because of the beauty of the blue stone and as The alluvial country of Mesopotamia lacks good stone for carving; hence the large stones of early cylinders were imported probably from Iran.

While most Mesopotamian cylinder seals form an image through the use of depressions in the cylinder surface (see lead photo above), some cylinder seals print images using raised areas on the cylinder. The former are used primarily on wet clays; the latter, sometimes referred to as roller stamps, are used to print images on cloth and other similar two dimensional surfaces. Cylinder seals are a form of impression seal, a category which includes the stamp seal and finger ring seal.>>