Tau vs Pi Smackdown - Numberphile 

I'm confident we can all adopt tau as quickly as the US adopts the metric system.

At 6:28 (tau minutes), the score spells out the first four decimal digits of pi.

i love how they just switch to the base 12 system at the end because both Steve and Matt were like "Yeah, that's better"

"If you want a unit to measure things, the unit shouldn't be the whole thing" -- Matt Parker

Imagine, the days before youtube, 780,000 people sitting in this room, to listen to these two men talk about numbers

I say we use Pau, which is 1.5 pi or 3/4 tau.

TAU makes 100% sense PI makes 50%*2 sense

I love that "we used to sacrifice goats" was 2 points for tau.

is this the maths version of a rap battle?

Matt got 1 point for saying "wow"

1:20 I love how he says shut up so secretively lol

"Insufficiently right" sounds like the math equivalent of "bless your heart" both in the insulting way and the honest heartwarming way.

in that case divide it by 360 no one would use that kind of a unit.

WHO WON? WHO'S NEXT? YOU DECIDE! EPIC MATH BATTLES OF HISTORY!

The integration thing was really cool. so many physics formulas are 0.5*something*something else ^2 and its nice to preserve that pattern

This video completely changed my view. I'm team tau now. I never thought of the fact that 1/x of a circle was tau/x radians.

2Pi or not 2Pi... That's the question...

7:53 "In that case divide it by 360" - Steve "Now you've just gone too far, no one would use that kind of a unit!" - Matt I feel like this is underappreciated.

It's funny to imagine that neither the Mould Effect nor the Parker Square were known back when this video was made. I mean, those things have become so closely associated with these guys that it feels pretty strange to imagine that there even was a time when they weren't known.

loved how the scores switched to base 12 too, great detail

This calls for an epic rap battle.

2 points for "historically, we've slaughtered goats" is my favorite

*23 - 27* "There are more advantages if we switch to base 12, than if we switched to tau" *ding* *1E - 23*

I like how Tau just fits into Steve's name like Pi does into Matt's.

"A unit shouldn't be the whole thing." Somebody forgot what units are.

When the scores changed to be in base 12 was probably the best part.

Let's just forget about all this and π=3.2

"Historically, we sacrificed goats" * 2 points* XD

"Tau gets you nowhere." - 7:27 absolutely loving this!

I love how the scoring changed to base 12 at the end :p

Steve: Blah Blah Blah Steve gets 1 point Matt: Wow Matt gets 1 point

“This tells us something!” - Steve Mould

This is ridiculous. What would we bake on tau day ? :p

I love how they got some of their points just for delivering sick burns. XD

I was never sold on Tau until I watched this video. Thanks Steve.

I remember being continually confused when learning to use radians because of the /2 and having to convert back to degrees to get a picture of how large a given angle was. E.g. 3pi/2 - you can work it out, but I think it would just be simpler to say (3/4)tau

You know you've been watching too much Numberphile when you get excited that both of their scores are primes.

I had a really hard time understanding radians and getting an intuition for angles in radians in terms of pi. Once I heard it explained in terms of tau, I understood instantly. Pi totally screwed me learning trig in high school.

I think we should call pi/4 (or tau/8) "pizza." Because: - It is the ratio of crust length slice length on an idealized pizza cut into eight slices - it is the ratio of pizza area to pizza box area, given a perfectly circular pizza that fits snugly into a perfectly square pizza box. - you can't spell 'pizza' without 'pi.' - if people want to complete the pattern we could also then call pi/2 = tau/4 'tauzza.'

Hahaha the moment when you switch the scoreboard to base 12 notation was the most subtly epic thing I've ever seen.

Why does τ only have one "leg" and π has two "legs" when τ=2π? Can we please switch the symbols?

Why does one have to be better, this is like arguing "8 is better than 4 because most of the time, instead of writing 2x4, you can just write 8." and the rebuttal is "Well, what if you want to write 2+2=4, then it would be awkward to write 2+2=8/2" yes, yes it would, and that's why we have both.

The problem with suddenly using tau is that a lot of people (physicists, engineers, etc) already use tau as the symbol for a time constant. They also use it as a dummy integration variable when integrating an equation from, say, zero to t.

Cause of WW1: Assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand WW2: It is complicated WW3: Pi vs Tau

Solution: Use whichever one is best for whatever you're doing. Argument over.

when Matt said "the unit shouldn't be the whole thing" his score should've been halved...

1:20 my man really just got a point just by saying "wow"

These two became two of my all-time favorite youtube personalities completely independently of each other. It's such a heartwarming trip to see a video over a decade old of them arguing about this. Outstanding.

Actually I think we really ought to stop saying we have a half-dozen items and instead say that we have a double-few items. It promotes positive thinking.

Love the way the scores switch to Base 12 at the end! I think I wish Tau won the VHS/Betamax wars but we're lumped with PI now.

I just use tau when I'm talking about things like sine wave periods and other trig stuff, and pi for the other stuff. But really I just use them both pretty much interchangeably. If I'm talking about pi or half tau, I write pi because you only have to write one thing. If I'm talking about tau or two pi, I write tau because you only have to write one thing. I think schools should teach both and they'll just be equally useful. It's not even something you have to bring in slowly. The only thing you'd have to do would be to say "oh, and by the way, you can just write two pi as tau" and that's it. It's incredibly simple. Circumference? Tau times r. Area? Pi r squared. Period of sin, cos, csc and sec? Tau. Period of tan and cot? Pi. They're constants. So if you can multiply two numbers together and get a single number, do it. Writing two pi or half tau to me seems like leaving 2 cubed as 2 cubed instead of just writing eight. Sometimes that stuff is useful to leave unsimplified; things like three hundred to the power of 256. But when you can write one symbol instead of two, why not do it?

Oh lord i havnt watched this video in so long. Both Steve and Matt are so young. The score swapping to base 12 at the end when Matt makes the base 12 argument is still hillarious.

Um, e^i(tau) = 1, which is actually way cooler because it essentially means, "one full turn is one"

USE PI WHEN IT WORKS BETTER AND USE TAU WHEN IT WORKS BETTER This was a cute video, though. :-D I like that Matt makes half his points while doing nothing.

2021: π is now known to τ×10¹³ digits. This took the best part of 4 months to calculate. Such dedication to π vs τ trolling.

the first example matt showed with euler's identity at 2:15 is bad because it also works with tau just as beautifully e^iπ + 1 = 0 e^iτ - 1 = 0

I wonder if people who prefer pi over tau think we should measure frequency in "half cycles"...

I'd much rather have a factor of 2 in some equations than a 1/2 in some equations...whole numbers are much nicer to deal with.

"Both of them have advantages and disadvantages" -> Matt gets 3 points

This is still one of the biggest robberies I've seen on RU-vid. Steve had this in the bag.

"The unit shouldn't be the whole thing." CONCEPT FAIL. We don't use radians to circles. We use radians to measure revolutions. Seriously, has Matt here gotten past elementary school geometry?

"Why are we getting so emotional about our irrationals when we should be getting more radial about our base systems." brilliant lol OK now do Base 10 vs Base 12

I'm amazed at that comeback from 5 - 11 to 11 - 11 and then even going into the lead for a second!

since the circumference is tau x r, we should build a tower on tau day!?

Pi is only simpler if you're already accustomed to the arithmetic abstraction of pi. If you are describing anything in physics there is nowhere that half a revolution makes more sense as a unit than a whole revolution.

I love the reaction of Matt when Steve is talking, it's like ''wtf you talkin about''

As a crochet/knitter, I absolutely love base 12 and use it for the vast majority of my stitch patterns!

The day has come. I was completely enthralled with a video about maths.

"Tau gets you NOWHERE." xDD!

I like the base twelve switch at the end

I got a phone call in the middle of this video and by chance stopped the video at 6:28. I'm proud of that.

I love how they end up giving each other points.

Isn't fighting between tau and pi, like fighting between kilogram and gram?

Tau is twice as large as Pi, but it looks like you cut Pi in half to get Tau.

Ah yes, 2/3 if my favorite comedic trio: Steve and Map

How did matt get a point just for saying "wow" ?? 😂😂😂

When tau is more used, someone says, "When we use tau, we see τ/2 often. Let's use pi insterd of τ/2. "

I was expecting blood and gore by the end of the video

As great as tau is, pi has become universally known for its constant, and is usually seen as such. Tau, on the other hand is commonly used to indicate torques, shear stresses, and time constants. Feel like there is potential for conflict and confusion when using it.

Matt: "the unit shouldn't be the whole thing" Me: Stares in Unit Circle.

So if Tau won would Numberphile have changed their logo?

Pi = Python = VHS Tau = Ruby = Betamax You just go with what is the most popular and supported.

I love that the names have the symbols in them

I think the argument about expressing radians as fractions of a whole circle really clinches superiority of Tau.

With pi you get this little nugget: "Pie are squared" (Pi*r^2) "No, they're round" -Hilarity ensures

I'm for pi! And here's why (from a physics rather than Maths point of view). When you talk about interference of waves we use pi radians to describe if it's constructive or destructive interference. For destructive it's π radian out of phase it's destructive if it's 2π it's constructive. Using Tau will create fractions and really detracts from the unit. I agree with Matt, it makes more sense to use π as it allows it to be a better unit. Encompassing something takes something away. Pi is everywhere from Hawking's equations to Coulomb's law (where k is 1/4πe0). It's for this reason that Steve's notion of it not being a just one unit is redundant. If we used Tau we'd get 4τ and 2τ so it doesn't actually "solve" anything.

this whole conversation was awesome

I like to think the reason they're sitting in an empty restaurant is that they met up for dinner, started discussing Pi vs Tau and now it's well after closing and all the staff are in the kitchen waiting for these two mathematicians to stop arguing and go home so they can close up shop.

I think we should use the complete turn as the standard unit of angle size.

Its very simple to me Tau makes the meaning of equations at the forefront. Wherever you see tau you see there has been a complete circle or a complete cycle or something of that manner. Any time an equation is simpler with pi its because a meaning has been obscured. Its not just about education, its about making your own results and your own findings clearer, and making a richer understanding of the results of others more immediate.

Matt: Breaths Counter: +10

That switch to 1Ɛ - 23 really got me. :D

7:44 "unit". I'm not a tauist but a *UNI*t shouldn't be 1? really Matt?

All that talk of pi, plus the sound of a ringing bell, made my mouth water…

The back and forth at 7:30 had me cracking up, lol.

As someone easily confused by mathematics, I bloody love Tau. It's so much more intuitive and easy to understand how it relates to stuff when it crops up than Pi is. Who cares that occasionally you wind up with equations that are Tau over 2 instead of just Pi when that Tau relates so much better to its subject; radians in a circle? For me, at least, Pi actually is wrong, in that it is wrong to inflict it on people learning maths.

So... Tau is a Parker Square?

Steve sealed his fate when he accidentally wrote pi.

Damm! Love the switch of Steve score from base 10 to 12

I like how you changed the results into base 12 at the end, that was clever!