Happy Tau Day 2011 (VIDEOS)

What, you thought Pi Day was the be-all, end-all in mathematical holidays? Get with the program. Tau is the new pi.

The internet usually goes nuts on March 14th, or 3/14, in celebration of Pi Day, named for the mathematical constant pi (around 3.14).

There’s a new movement brewing to celebrate tau, approximately 6.28, (twice pi) instead of pi (and today is 6/28…get it?).

The movement burst onto the scene last year when Michael Hartl launched the Tau Manifesto, a lengthy essay about why pi is confusing and should be replaced with the constant tau instead.

Among Hartl’s reasons for using tau instead of pi, according to CNN:

- Tau is the ratio of circumference to radius of a circle, and circles are more naturally defined by their radius than diameter.

- Radians, a unit to measure angles of a circle, are confusing to new learners because of all the factors of 2. There are 2pi radians in a full circle, and pi radians in half a circle. With tau, things become simpler: the full circle is tau radians, and the half-turn is ½ tau radians.

“There definitely are some people who have trouble with the notation,” says Hartl, a physicist and entrepreneur. “I would eventually like to see that the mathematical powers that be acknowledge the problem.”

If you would like to start memorizing the digits of tau, here are the first 100,000 to get you started.

So what do you think?  Should Pi Day be replaced by Tau Day?  This girl certainly hates pi.

Check out the videos below for more.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3174T-3-59Q

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Da-6AP0v0Pc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jG7vhMMXagQ

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IF1zcRoOVN0