If you remember pi, the Greek letter that pops up from your nightmares of high school math, then here’s a message for you- pi is a lie. It’s not wrong as such, but it unnecessarily complicates geometry, trigonometry, polar coordinates, and much more. If you replace pi with the constant tau (equal to twice pi, or 6.28…) then all these problems go away. In 2001 Bob Palais wrote an essay called “Pi is wrong!” that explained the benefits of tau, and on Tau Day 2010 (6/28) Michael Hartl released The Tau Manifesto explaining why we need to make the change. If you are an engineer, mathematician, or anyone else who uses pi then you’ll find some really interesting thinking in his article.
If you aren’t a math geek, there’s still something for you. Strangely, pi and tau make good music! You probably know that pi (and therefore tau) are irrational, infinite, non-repeating numbers. If you assign the digits from 1-9 to an 8-note octave and then play them, both pi and tau create music. It’s hard to explain but easy to listen to. Try one of these renditions…
“What Tau sounds like” by Michael John Blake
“What Pi sounds like” by Michael John Blake
“The Pi symphony, the Ruse performance, movement 1” by Lars Erickson
“The Pi symphony, the Ruse performance, movement 2” by Lars Erickson
(Added interest– Lars Erickson is suing Michael John Blake for copyright infringement on his symphony, claiming the melody generated by the digits of pi is actually his melody. You’ll have to follow this developing story yourself.)
