i like key lime, myself

[ironymaiden]

youtube vid (pleasant, includes fruit pie): why pi is (mostly) wrong (or alternately, a text reference)

tl;dr is that we might have an easier time teaching this stuff if we based circle math on radius instead of diameter.

which led to a conversation at lunch about when humans codified pi (pretty damn early) and why diameter? i posited that using diameter comes from the ease of drawing/visualizing it freehand, a radius wants a compass.

but this tau discussion reminds me of something that i had a hard time swallowing as a kid studying math: "wait, this is all arbitrary?"

Comments

[buhrger]

but this tau discussion reminds me of something that i had a hard time swallowing as a kid studying math: "wait, this is all arbitrary?"
some of it is, some of it isn't. that's the point i make when i'm first introducing radians to the students.

[buhrger]

if we based circle math on radius instead of diameter.
FTFY

[ironymaiden]

seen. i dithered, then used the terms they appeared to be using in the article.

[ironymaiden]

and i think that i could have held that in my head at 17 (although i suspect that a certain number of your students still don't deal well). at 12, my brain wasn't quite ready for it - if any of it was arbitrary how was any of it true, chase tail, get angry, decide math homework is useless, read a book.

[buhrger]

both terms come up in this discussion, but radians are a way of measuring angles (using either π or τ prominently), the radius is a distance. (and then, in class, we also talk about "ratios", which are* a third thing yet.)

* sort of. in a sense, radians are ratios. but if i tell my students that, their heads asplode.

[buhrger]

if any of it was arbitrary how was any of it true, chase tail
[memo to self: refrain from explaining ZFC and gödel's theorem to the [Bad username or site: ironymaiden title= @ livejournal.com]]

[ironymaiden]

okay, so my first impulse was correct. will edit.

[stolen-tea.livejournal.com]

Key lime tau... Mmmm...