My problem with March 14th

So, today is the 14th of March, also known by many of you as "Pi day" (So called because it correlates to the popular approximation of the mathematical constant Pi - 3.14). However, I've always had a love-hate relationship with Pi, and don't like how much people focus on Pi. Here's why I don't like Pi day.

First, I'm not gonna be like those misguided souls who will say that "Pi is wrong." Pi is not wrong, there is nothing inherently wrong with the constant 3.14159265. . . etc. It is a perfectly accurate measure of the ratio between a circle's diameter and its circumference. But there is where my first problem with pi is. I would like to ask people who tout a love of pi day exactly what pi is and get an answer similar to "It's the circumference of a circle divided by that circle's diameter." But instead I would probably get an answer like, "Three point one four!" Great, that's like asking "What is two" and instead of saying something like, "Half of four," you say "It's TWO!" That's tautological. It's redundant. It's like making a sandwich with jelly and jelly. In any case, my problem is that Pi actually has a definition that makes it quite useful in math in general and geometry in specific. To be fair, there are plenty of people that use pi to determine things that pi is related to, like the area of a circle, or the volume of a sphere, or the length of an arc, but it's not just some number that someone decided seemed cool, it has a specific definition.

Second, and somewhat related to the first, Pi has a reputation for having an infinite number of digits and people put a lot of emphasis in memorizing a large number of said digits. While I will not discredit the skill and dedication it takes to memorize a large string of digits, memorizing pi to the 500th digit does not make you any sort of "math genius." It makes you good a memorizing numbers. I have pi memorized to the first nine digits, which is six digits more than I ever really need when using pi in calculations. If I actually do need more digits for some reason, I have calculators that will give me pi to more digits, if I so desire. The fact of the matter is, though, that after four digits, the value isn't changing much. Another way to think about it, is that when we talk about large sums of money, we might say that a certain object is sold for Twelve million dollars. If that number is actually $12,264,318.52, we still say Twelve million, because the other numbers, when compared to twelve million, are insignificant.

Finally, Pi is just annoying. Who here knows how to find the circumference of a circle? You multiply the radius by 2 then by pi. Now why is there a two in there? Simple, pi is the diameter of the circle over the circumference and the diameter is twice the radius. So why don't we just make the formula pi times the diameter, you ask? Because a circle is not defined by its diameter, it's defined by its radius, or the distance from the center of the circle to any part of the edge. It's easy to measure that, as long as you know the center. The diameter is the distance between two points on a circle that are on exactly opposite sides, to measure that you need two points, and you need to be sure they're the right two points. In any case, the reason we use double the radius is because we need to make up for the fact that pi is related to the diameter and not the radius. A better way to measure the circumference of a circle would be to use the ratio that compares the radius to the circumference, which is conveniently pi doubled, or 6.283185. . . also known as Tau. Tau makes a lot of things a lot less confusing and helps to clear up a lot the formulas related to circles.

Anyway, the point of today's rant is that Pi day, although a fun reason to eat pie with a Greek letter on it, is not that great. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to make preparations for my Tau day party on June 28th.