Quite an old joke I heard from one TV serial long time ago (I forgot what’s the title though) :

Q : What is a dessert that half of its height is 1.57
A : A piece of pi(e).

lol… quite funny isn’t.

Well, we all know, perhaps since we’re at elementary school, that Pi or π is the ratio of the circumference to the diameter of a circle; approximately equal to 3.14.

But Palais said Pi is wrong!

Click to enlarge the image or simply go to the original page.

From the articles, he suggests that pi should have been assigned twice its current value. In general, this is a valid argument. He really makes a strong case for that 2*pi and why it should be the constant rather than the constant of 3.14159…It makes sense to refer to a quarter turn as Pi/4. One quarter=1/4 after all. But it hardly makes any difference since we are all used to pi=C/d, isn’t it?

I personally believe his opinion is even more profound than the proof of Fermat’s principle of Thurston’s conjecture, (okay, I might be overreacting ). But this really is an impressive thought IMHO.

So… what do you think?
Is is necessary to build scientific community to change Pi?
Or is it just such a beautiful disaster