No Pi day today. Need to wait another 3 months, 14 days....

Professor Kruskal pointed out to my class a few years ago that someone had written a paper about how pi is wrong:  http://www.math.utah.edu/~palais/pi.pdf

The author points out that if pi were 6.28, things might be simpler or more elegant...

For example, when you took trigonometry you learned that one full rotation of a circle is 2*pi.  Thus that cyclical graph we know as sin(x) and cos(x) would look the same but the x-axis would just be multiplied by a factor of two.  After all, humans invented pi and the value.  Maybe it's tacky to suggest that one circle should allow pi(in radians)=pie(shape).  Or maybe we gave it a number before we really understood what pi was really about.  Let's dig a little deeper and explore some other things Mr. Palais points out:

Currently:        cox(x+pi) = -cos(x)
If pi=6.28:       cos(x+pi) = cos(x)


Currently:   roots of unity e^(2*pi/n) = 0, 1, ..n-1
If pi=6.28   roots of unity e^(pi/n) = 0, 1, ..., n-1

And my all time favorite (the most beautiful equation ever written):

e^(pi * i) = -1

Now if we let pi = 6.28 we get:

e^(pi * i) = 1

Yes, we've improved the amazing.

So, while the mildly mannered geeks all celebrate today as pi day, I'll be waiting until June 28th to sit down and read "The Joy of Pi"  http://www.joyofpi.com/