

William Jones, the Welshman who invented π - akashtndn
http://www.theguardian.com/science/alexs-adventures-in-numberland/2015/mar/14/pi-day-2015-william-jones-the-welshman-who-invented-pi

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cnvogel
Typography-Remark: The font used at ycombinator (Verdana) makes the title
almost useless, as "π" its shown as a bottom-open-rectangle. There's a special
codepoint for the mathematical alphanumeric italic symbol 𝜋 (Unicode
0x1D70B)...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_operators_and_sym...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mathematical_operators_and_symbols_in_Unicode#Mathematical_Alphanumeric_Symbols_block)

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wanderingstan
This symbol does not display for iOS. (Sadly lots of Unicode mathematical
symbols are missing from iOS, which is why those hacks for showing text in
Fraktur or italics don't work either.)

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mjklin
Why would the British have Pi day when they write the date 14/3?

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darklajid
Because we don't have 14 month and otherwise they would never be able to
celebrate this glorious occasion.

(Really, the month/day format is stupid, but for novelty purposes that
shouldn't matter?)

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fennecfoxen
Why is month/day stupid? What other formats do we use in daily life where the
least significant digit comes first? No, what's stupid is month/day/year. ;)

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amelius
But he made a big mistake [1]

[1]
[http://www.math.utah.edu/~palais/pi.html](http://www.math.utah.edu/~palais/pi.html)

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wyager
You're getting downvoted pretty hard, but I generally agree. Using tau (2π)
feels much more natural. It seems like, in physics, 90% of the time we use π,
it shows up with a 2 next to it. And the article you linked has a good point;
if we called τ a "turn", statements about getting arc lengths from angles and
radii would translate to natural language much better. τ not only corresponds
to full rotations, but also to full periods of sine and cosine functions.

