This is covered in the Tao Manifesto. tau*r^2/2 is more consistent with other formulas that are the result of integration. For example Distance fallen is g*t^2/2, Spring energy k*x^2/2, and Kinetic energy m*v^2/2. Think of it this way 1/2 was there but got canceled out by the 2 in 2*pi.

Quadratic Forms

I have been day dreaming about a sinus rinse or nasal spray that does this for at least over a year. I will throw gobs of money at any company that is making a product like this. Do you hear me internet? Please take my money

I know this story is a bit old but I just have to comment. I get frequent sinus infections and have not taken antibiotics in years. Further more I've only taken 1 sick day in the past 2 years. I'm not a doctor but this is how I think this all works. Antibiotics are delivered by the blood, under normal conditions your blood does not empty in to your sinuses. This is why at the START of an infection they do nothing. But once an infection gets bad; like I have a fever, headache, and I might pass out bad, that is when the infection has broken down the wall of your sinus and is getting in to your blood. At that point they can quickly work as you have noted. You may have noticed that a day or two before your feel better you see some blood in some very very colorful mucous. The green/yellow/white mucus is the infection, the blood is where it connected to the wall of your sinuses.

So what I do is as soon as I feel my nose get stuffy(not blocked just a little hard to breathe) and my mind not working at 100% (this is NOT easy to notice. It's taken me years to get close to right on this) I start to take long (Typically an hour) hot (as hot as I can with out it hurting) showers and use sinus rinses to try and push out the gunk. This is all to loosen the infection so i can get it out before it grows big enough to get me really sick.

FYI: Be careful when doing the rinses, if the water is not boiled or distilled you could get something worse from it. I also stay clear of decongestants, they seem to dry my nose out. This will only keep things there longer since dry mucous is sticky mucous.

That's true but kinda misleading. As I remember it that's not quite how it went down. It's been a while since I read the book but it was something like this. It started during a redesign of the planetarium. They decided to organize all the planets into obvious groups. Balls of rock, asteroids, gas giants, Kuiper belt objects and comets where the obvious groups. They compared Pluto to those groups and decided it should not be with the planets since it's not a ball of rock or gas giant. The choice was not simple or easy but they ignored pluto because it would have been very expensive to change the layout of the Planetarium later. He did not demote Pluto he was just right in predicting it would be demoted to prevent the sudden addition of many other Kuiper belt 'planets'. His wiki page tells the same basic story.

It's dumb to blame Tyson for correctly predicting it, and it's just as dumb to blame Mike Brown for finding a KBO larger then Pluto that caused it to be demoted. If you want to blame anything for this blame science for it's unstoppable desire to revise it self in order to make more sense. Stupid progress always mess up our childhoods, how many times do they expect me to go back and correct my finger paint drawings?

While I still disagree with you on the area of a circle you make a good point. I still feel that there is a fundamental rule that is clearly visible in that group of formulas I and the author have not put together a good representation of it. Since I am an engineer and not a mathematician I don't think I will be able to correctly represent it by continuing so I will not bother to go in to it further.

I honestly can not remember many places were Pi was on it's own. If you can please do mention them.

A major part of the point of what I guess you could call the 'Tau movement' is that it is not at all incompatible. That's why (and again the Tao manifesto covers this) they are suggesting using Tau and not changing the value of Pi. You would simply be introducing a new constant that everyone could recognize as 2 Pi. Books could also have the two different versions of the formulas on the same page of their text books and they should be able to function just fine.

To be honest I actually do have one problem with the idea, Tau is already heavily used in other areas (it looks to much like a T to be ignored), another less used Greek letter should be chosen instead.

The general formula for a circle does not favor Pi or Tau but the general formula for finding an area for simple shapes does favor Tao. The formulas shown are compared not because they are all for the same area of study but because they are all derived the same way mathematically. In a very real sense, they are all the same formula just with different variables. Looked at this way the 1/2 belongs there, the math says so, it's Pi that messed it all up and got it canceled out. The area formula is a false positive in favor of Pi.

Personally I don't treat this as a profound insight because Pi felt wrong for a long time. It kept coming up as 2Pi in formulas and only very rarely did it stand on it's own. You can't show a person 2Pi a million times and expect them to still think that Pi with out the 2 is worth much. I can't speak for others but I'm guessing lots of other people felt the same and once they saw "The Tau Manifesto" they had that uneasy feeling finally justified. The math is much cleaner with Tau. That does not mean much if you want to just get work done but if you enjoy the beauty of math it's a big deal.

Actually that question does much better in talks of math. I am far more interested in being shown cases where I am clearly wrong by the numbers then cases where I am wrong because of some old book said so. I learn and improve by actively seeking out things I think are true that are actually wrong. So if you can give me a case where I am wrong in this I would be happy to see it.

By that logic nothing should ever be simplified or improved because "If you can't do it the way I did it you should not be doing it!"

I find that example very compelling. It was something that bothered me for awhile when I was learning math. It is a major formula created by doing an integral that looks different for no immediately clear reason. The reason, I eventually noticed on my own years ago, was Pi was a bad choice for a constant and this has been adjusted for by just using 2 Pi 90% of the time.

The article was written like that for the authors own amusement. See the FAQ section

Are you serious?
Of course. I mean, I’m having fun with this, and the tone is occasionally lighthearted, but there is a serious purpose.

As an engineer I am aware of how over loaded Tau is at the moment. I agree that Tau is not the best choice here but that does not change that 2 Pi is not as elegant as using another symbol and is something we should consider replacing. Math would be clearer and simpler for future generations if Pi was replaced.

I'm sorry but if switching to Tau requires you relearn calculus you have bigger problems then switching to Tau

Personally the argument for Tau has nothing to do with trig. Zero. Pi in Trig is harmless, it's once you start using Pi for everything else that it becomes ugly and clearly the wrong constant. Read "The Tau Manifesto", it goes over all the place that Pi is not as good as Tau.

For the area you're forgetting your calculus. Area calculations are basically summation equations and those always have a 0.5 in there. Table 3 of "The Tau Manifesto" shows several other such equations.This is a minor point that becomes a big deal. By lacking consistency across math what should be obvious and beautiful similarities become lost and hard to see.

Those other calculations are not any more difficult then they were before. Changing to Tau here is again a net benefit for mathematics.

I know changing from Pi to Tau seems silly but it's not at all about radius vs diameter for calculating the circumference, It's about everything else that uses Pi. When equations that use Pi are compared to other similar equations that use other constants they are always off by a factor of 2 in some way. Tau fixes that in all cases I am aware of (If you know any it does not please post them). "The Tau Manifesto" link goes over this in detail. Tau is simply a more fundamental constant then PI.

Yes. The idea of a mathematical notation that has been around for generations being replaced with something that makes more sense is something I would consider "News for nerds". While the idea has been spoken about before on slashdot and thus Tau it self is not news, Today being a day to promote it is news.

I don't think that matters at this point. Right now he needs to convince us, The geeks who play with the details. Once that is done the geeks will tell everyone something simple and dumb "Look mom. Sugar is just really bad for you ok? It causes diabetes. Cut back on it.". At that point people will listen and spread the word.

Personally I saw this video over a year ago and have enjoyed watching it spread to people the way it has. I expect it will be a long process and that normal people will start talking about this a lot in the coming years. With both the corporate fighting and the average Joe's refusal to give up on sugar it should be a long, fun battle.