This is the reason why the "punchline" to Sagan's *Contact* makes no sense. There isn't a degree of freedom, when you're designing a universe, where you get to decide the value of pi. On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 8:57 PM, Tomas Rokicki <rokicki@gmail.com> wrote:
I sort of agree with Eugene on this one; the concept of "redefining pi" is akin to "redefining 7". Yes, you can take some sort of artistic license and do that, but in doing so you risk sounding like that pot-addled hippie wondering about the universe contained in the dust speck under his fingernail. Pi is so much more than the geometric ratio you are concerned with.
Pick almost any other name; be amazed when it coincides with the constant we know as pi, but please let me keep my Fourier transforms, my gamma function, and all the rest.
Call it cornbread:
"Pi r squared? Pi r not square. Pi r round. Cornbread r square."
-tom
On Mon, Feb 13, 2017 at 5:28 PM, James Propp <jamespropp@gmail.com> wrote:
On Monday, February 13, 2017, Eugene Salamin via math-fun < math-fun@mailman.xmission.com> wrote:
While some of my suggestions have been included in the current manuscript, I see no change concerning 2π = circumference/radius being a variable.
I put in more air-quotes, and I put in the passage about the Feast of Fools, so that readers who get that far will know that talking about "different values of pi" is mathematical "street talk", not acceptable in the inner precincts of the kingdom.
Eugene and Bill and others would probably prefer a more stringent approach, and if I were the first person to use the phrase "different values of pi" I'd certainly agree with them. However, this slangy way of talking is already pretty standard in parts of the math ed world and on the web, so I don't think I'd be opening any hitherto unopened floodgates of loose usage.
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