[ruby-core:52969] [ruby-trunk - Feature #4897] Define Math::TAU and BigMath.TAU. The "true" circle constant, Tau=2*Pi. See http://tauday.com/

Issue #4897 has been updated by Student (Nathan Zook).


Please, just say no.  This garbage is one and only thing that has made me really glad that I decided to leave academia.  Having to dissuade every crank from this idea would ruin my mood for weeks.

There a large number of excellent candidate constants to be included.  There is absolutely no cause to include constants that are power-of-two multiples of each other.  You want tau in math?  Fine.  module Math ; TAU = 2 * PI ; end.  Done.  Put that in all your files.  Move it to your initialization code.  Publish a gem.  I don't care.  But don't waste the time of people who understand that shifting a binary point by 1 really isn't a big deal.

-Math::PI

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Feature #4897: Define Math::TAU and BigMath.TAU. The "true" circle constant, Tau=2*Pi. See http://tauday.com/
https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/issues/4897#change-37123

Author: sbaird (Simon Baird)
Status: Feedback
Priority: Low
Assignee: 
Category: Joke
Target version: Next Major


Firstly please read the Tau Manifesto at http://tauday.com/ . It's quite long but essential to understanding why this is a good idea.

Here is a patch on trunk that implements this:
http://simonbaird.blogspot.com/2011/06/tau-in-ruby.html

Allow me to anticipate and respond in advance to some common objections:

1. It's easy to define it yourself so why put this in core.
Possibly correct, but I think this is the right thing to do. Tau is important. And it's a pretty small patch.

2. If this constant goes in then pretty soon someone will want every other math constant and there are hundreds of them. (Slippery slope argument).
The circle constant is one of the two most important numbers is mathematics. It's not just another math constant. We already define Pi.


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