so March 14 2015 3 1 4 1 5 I know some
of you are excited about this so-called
super pi day five whole digits that
hasn't happened in a century
it's the pi day of a lifetime now I'm an
ardent believer that PI being only half
a turn around a circle is the wrong
choice for circle constant and we should
have used tau all along but still five
digits I see the appeal that's much
closer to infinity than the usual three
digits we haven't had more digits than
this since the Renaissance March 14th of
1592 and we won't see more than five
digits again until year 15926 unless you
know you decide that writing the last
three digits of the year rather than the
last two is okay in which case March
14th
21:59 the whole thing is a little
arbitrary I mean 3 1 4 2 0 1 5 is not a
very good way to begin the digits of pi
and those in other countries will be
wondering why 1 4 0 3 1 5 has anything
to do with PI whatsoever but beneath the
arbitrariness of date writing
conventions lies a deeper problem with
this pi day the arbitrariness of dates
themselves it's only 2015 by the
calendar of one particular religion and
culture that we happen to adopt a
standard and then there's a month fine
we celebrate a number that starts with
three in the third month of the year
but we're using digits of pi in base 10
and signifying them using a 12-month
calendar doesn't that deeply bother you
right down to the core of your very
being months are all sorts of weird
lengths days at least really follow an
astronomical event I mean it's not like
the spinning of the Earth and space
happens at a fundamentally non arbitrary
speed but at least it's a global
constant basically so maybe pi day
should have been the 314th day of the
year on November 10th or sometimes ninth
but instead of representing PI's digits
in an arbitrary base in an arbitrary
calendar with arbitrary conventions
maybe pi day really should be on a day
that actually represents what pi is pi
is the number of radians that gets you
halfway around a circle pi is halfway
through a sine wave pi is 180 degrees pi
is at its essence a half cycle whether
you write it in decimal and get 3.1415
etc
or in any other base whether a year has
12 months or 10 months and whether we
decide to give him one 30 days or 31 a
year is still based on a turn of the
earth around the Sun and if there are
any reason in the world then pi day
would be celebrated when the earth has
turned halfway around the Sun right in
the middle of the year on July 2nd no
it's not July 1st because we as a
culture decided that February of course
better than pi day on July 2nd would be
today tau being 6.28 etc radians a full
turn around a circle hmm wouldn't be
nice to celebrate every full turn of the
earth around the Sun on a special
holiday Oh way we do of course the
placement of New Year's is also
arbitrary and based on just one
convention really the only fundamentally
mathematically universally non arbitrary
choice when it comes to picking a day
out of the year is to day right now
today is the only day fundamentally
different from all the rest which means
pi day is a half a year from now and
will always be half a year from now no
matter what day it is which means today
rather than being your precious super pi
day is actually today one full turn
around the Sun from itself that's what
you're really celebrating every time you
have an anniversary every birthday every
holiday you're celebrating complete
turns you've been choosing tau over pi
all along today is tau day every day is
tau day and I'll see you again
Cal radians from now for engineers pi
day on three one four one six