From: shyouhei@... Date: 2016-10-14T08:38:25+00:00 Subject: [ruby-core:77625] [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 Shyouhei Urabe. Just to add my POV: I'm a complete amateur in pure Mathematics. To me who is an outsider of academia, I can't say we should accept or reject this request right now. All I can say is it seems not widely used in papers for some reason I don't know. It's not clear to me wether the constant �� is just yet to receive wider acceptance because it's relatively young, or is actively receiving low marks from academic community. I'm just not sure. This constant is a constant (by nature), so once introduced in ruby it's highly expected to stay defined forever. Because of this property I'm afraid of wrong decision. Is it really safe we add this? In order to make this sure I think we need either more time, or an expert's counsel, or maybe both. ---------------------------------------- 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-60891 * Author: Simon Baird * Status: Assigned * Priority: Normal * Assignee: Yukihiro Matsumoto ---------------------------------------- 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. ---Files-------------------------------- tau.patch (1.2 KB) tau.patch (1.2 KB) -- https://bugs.ruby-lang.org/ Unsubscribe: