I was reading one of my favorite comics, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, and happend to notice that one of the “geeky” characters wore a t-shirt with “τ > π ” on it. I’d never seen the “τ” symbol used like that so I started googling.

It didn’t take to long to figure out that τ was the Greek letter Tau. That left me to figure out what it had to do with Pi, specifically why someone thought that Tau was greater than Pi.

Googling Tau and Pi led me to The Tau Manifesto which is a discussion about what Tau is and why it’s better than Pi.

To summarize : For the longest time, folks figured that Pi was the Circumference of a circle divided by its Diameter. π = C/D. The fine Tau Manifesto folks figure that life or math or something would be better if this circle constant formula was based on the the circle’s Radius instead of its Diameter. Oh, let’s call this constant Tau. τ = C/R.

By this time, I’m sure that some of you have figured out that τ = 2π.

This all leaves me with two conclusions:

1. The shirt was correct. Since τ = 2π, then τ > π.
2. Some mathematicians have way too much time on their hands.