Pi Day Celebration Ruined By Purist Who Insists On Using Tau

A mathematics department's annual Pi Day celebration was derailed on March 14th when a geometry professor delivered an unsolicited forty-minute lecture arguing that pi is the wrong circle constant and that the department should instead celebrate Tau Day on June 28th. Dr. Radian Fullcircle interrupted the cutting of a circular pie — purchased specifically for the occasion — to present what he called "a brief corrective" on the historical accident that led to the adoption of pi over tau. "Pi is the ratio of circumference to diameter," Fullcircle began, as colleagues slowly lowered their paper plates. "But nobody uses diameter. Every important formula in mathematics uses radius. Tau — 2 pi — is the ratio of circumference to radius, which is the natural constant. Pi is half a turn. Tau is a full turn. We are celebrating half a constant." The lecture covered the simplification of Euler's identity (e to the i tau equals one, "which actually equals one, unlike pi's version, which mysteriously equals negative one"), the elimination of the factor of 2 from the Gaussian integral, and a philosophical argument about why "halfness should not be baked into our fundamental constants." "People were holding pie and not eating it for forty minutes," recalled department chair Dr. Sylvia Rational. "The pie got cold. You can't reheat pie. He ruined pie." Fullcircle has proposed the event be postponed to June 28th and renamed Tau Day, with two pies served to represent the doubled constant. The department voted 23-1 to retain the March 14th date, with the sole dissenting vote coming from Fullcircle. "They're eating half-pies on half-a-constant day and calling it a celebration," Fullcircle muttered. "This is why mathematics has a public relations problem." He has confirmed he will attend next year's Pi Day celebration, bringing what he describes as "educational materials."