Pining for You
"Okay, Sunset. You can do this," Sunset Shimmer said to herself as she approached the front yard of Canterlot High, where she knew Twilight would soon show up as well, the school day having ended a few minutes ago. Everything was ready. It had taken some time after Twilight had transferred from Crystal Prep for Sunset to realize that she was developing a crush on her, and some more to come to terms with it. Then she'd needed to gather up the nerve to actually do something about it, and come up with the best way to do so. Now, at last, she was ready to make a move. She'd even confided in Spike beforehand, so he'd know to leave the two alone.
The timing was perfect, too, what with that night being the date of the slumber party the girls and Spike had been planning at Applejack's place — if everything worked out, they could announce the good news to everyone. If not… well, at least she'd be around plenty of people willing to comfort her. And Rainbow Dash would be there too, she supposed.
And yet, she couldn't help but feel nervous — more nervous than she felt she should, in fact. It's not like she hadn't dealt with rejection before. Maybe it was because her friendship with Twilight and the others was still so new and precious to her that she was afraid of risking it, or maybe she was just less carefree than she was all those years ago. Whatever the reason, her heart kept pounding, and she struggled to keep a calm expression.
The front door of the school building opened, letting a mass of students pass through. Twilight was the last out, having stayed back to avoid being caught up in the crowd. She smiled as she saw Sunset wave at her, and they united as the other students began to disperse. Soon, the two girls were left alone in the yard.
A muffled voice let Twilight know that Spike wanted to be let out of her backpack. Once Twilight had opened the zipper, the dog hopped to the ground. "Hey, Twilight, I need to go. I promised Pinkie I'd lend her a hand — er, paw, with the preparations for the slumber party."
"Are you sure you can get there safely by yourself?" Twilight asked.
"Of course! I'm not exactly an ordinary dog anymore, after all."
"I suppose not. Still, don't forget to be careful!"
"I won't. You girls have fun! I'll see you at AJ's place!" Spike called out as he ran off. Just before turning around the corner of the school, he stopped briefly to give Sunset an encouraging wink and what seemed like an attempt at a thumbs up.
Sunset took a deep breath to calm herself. This was the moment she'd been waiting for. "Hey, Twilight, I've got something for you," she said as she opened her own backpack.
"Oh? What is it?"
"Here you go." Sunset handed Twilight a handmade card.
It was a rosy pink, with a fractal pattern made of hearts. In the middle, written with a bright red ink in Sunset's prettiest handwriting, were the words "Are you tau?" Twilight opened the card, revealing the rest of the message: "Because you're beautiful and transcendental, and everything makes more sense with you."
A moment of silence passed, with an expression on Twilight's face that Sunset couldn't read. She started feeling nervous again. Was the card too cheesy? Was she coming on too strong? Were the compliments too exaggerated?
Quietly enough that Sunset only barely heard it, Twilight said, "Oh no." She then turned to Sunset, saying, "Don't tell me you're one of those people."
Sunset blinked. "Huh?"
"Please tell me you're not a tauist."
Slightly indignant, Sunset said, "I'm sorry, what?"
"I mean, how could you possibly think that pi, one of the most famous and beautiful numbers in mathematics should just be… cast aside like that?"
Sunset's eye twitched, her panic from a moment before turning into irritation. "Well, excuse me, Twilight, but I was under the impression that math is supposed to be as useful and elegant as possible," she said, injecting as much sarcasm into her voice as possible.
Twilight narrowed her eyes. "Oh, is that why you're willing to just throw the first non-algebraic number ever discovered under the bus?"
"Oh, for the love of— Just because pi's more conventional, that doesn't mean it's better! Tau could remove so many unnecessarily convolutions, not to even mention making math easier to learn!"
"Well, if you'd like to claim that pi should be replaced, then I expect you're ready to argue your point!"
Sunset's mouth drew into a snarl. "Oh, you bet your pretty little head I am."
"And how about Euler's identity?" Twilight yelled. "Do you suggest we simply abandon what is one of the most elegant equations in all of mathematics?"
"Actually," Sunset hollered back, "I want to make it even more beautiful! e to the power of i tau equals one, and by separating the exponent into fourths, we get the powers of i! Which, in case you didn't notice, represents a unit circle in the complex plane!
Twilight's rebuttal faded into the distance as an exasperated Rainbow Dash walked upstairs and away from the Apples' kitchen. "So, would you mind explaining exactly what they're going on about?" she asked Spike, who had been trying his best to read a book. "In non-colossal-nerd terms, please."
Spike sighed. "Well, you know what pi is, right?" he replied. "A circle's circumference divided by its diameter, approximately three point one four? Never ends, never repeats itself, all that?"
"I have a rough idea, yeah. It shows up a lot in advanced math stuff, right?"
Spike nodded. "See, thing is, there's some people — and apparently Sunset's one of them — who think that pi is actually more inconvenient than it should be. According to them, it would be more useful to use the ratio of a circle's circumference to it's radius instead. They call that number, which is also two times pi, by the name 'tau'."
"And... why, exactly, are Sunset and Twilight at each other's throats over this?"
"I'm not really sure, actually," the dog admitted. "I guess they just got into an argument about it, a few less-than-friendly words got said, and it just… downspiraled from there."
"Huh." After a moment, Rainbow gave him a curious look. "Actually, Spike, how do you know so much about math even though you've been a regular dog for most of your life? Did you just get all that when you got zapped with magic?"
"Oh, I'm sure that played no small part in it, but I don't think that's all of it. I mean, keep in mind that I was raised by Twilight, of all people," Spike said with a smirk.
"Heh. Leave it Twi to teach math to her dog."
Spike chuckled. "Oh, you don't know the half of it."
Twilight seethed. "So, what? You're saying we should throw out every single textbook that uses pi, and replace them with ones that use tau?"
"No, I'm saying we should slowly phase tau in! And it could help so many people learn things like trigonometry more easily!"
"Oh, is that why you failed that geometry question in the Academic Decathlon?"
Sunset's nostrils flared. "THAT WAS BECAUSE I WAS STRESSED AND MADE A TYPO, AND YOU KNOW IT! AND WE WEREN'T EVEN ALLOWED TO USE TRIGONOMETRY FOR IT!"
Twilight prepared to shriek something back—
"ENOUGH!"
Twilight and Sunset turned to look at the source of the yell. Fluttershy, whom they hadn't noticed due to the heat of their argument, looked frazzled.
"Now, it's perfectly normal to have disagreements with your friends, and that's okay," she said with a deep sigh. "But you two—" she pointed an accusatory finger at Sunset and Twilight, "—have been yelling and screaming at each other for several hours now, and only because of math. Because you can't agree on what number to use, and that's apparently a good enough reason to keep everyone else awake."
Fluttershy glared at the other two girls, who avoided eye contact with her and each other.
"Now, I want you both to apologize to each other and make up."
Twilight looked at her feet. "…I'm sorry. I guess that got a little out of hand."
"You weren't the only one blowing it way out of proportion," Sunset replied gingerly. "I was just as much at fault as you were, and I'm sorry too."
"Good," Fluttershy said. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I am going to sleep."
With that, she promptly turned around, walked up the stairs to the bedroom, and shut the door.
A moment passed in an awkward quiet.
"Hey, Sunset?" Twilight asked.
"Yes?"
"I know this wasn't exactly a very good debate on whether pi or tau is better, but you actually made some pretty good points back there. So, a little later, could we maybe have a proper conversation on this? I'm actually kind of interested in discussing it. Just, you know, without all the shouting."
Sunset smiled. "I'd like that. And speaking of shouting…" she nodded her head towards the bedroom door. "Five bucks says that Fluttershy's gonna spend at least an hour apologizing to us next morning."
"Sorry, I'm not in the habit of taking bets that I know I'm going to lose," Twilight responded with a chuckle. "I really didn't expect her to burst out like that, though. She seems way too… gentle to do that."
"It caught me off guard too, but I guess everybody has a limit. We were pretty loud, after all." Sunset thought of something, then grinned. "I suppose you could say we got a little… irrational."
Twilight snorted in laughter. "Yes, we were a tad too pious about our stances."
"We shouldn't have gone to taun on each other like that."
All the tension that had been building between Sunset and Twilight melted away as they shared a laugh.
"Actually, all these puns remind me…" Twilight rummaged through her backpack. "What was it that you wrote on this thing again?" She pulled out a pink, familiar-looking card. "It was actually pretty clever, if I remember correctly."
A sudden panic swelled in Sunset's chest. "No, you don't have to look at—"
"Now that I think of it, why did you give me this in the first pla—" Twilight looked at the card as though for the first time, her eyes tracing the flattering words and heart shapes upon it. "Oh." She blushed. "R-Right."
Sunset stumbled for words. "Twilight, I, uh… I can sleep on the couch if you're uncomforta—"
"Wait," Twilight said. "If… if you're asking what I think you're asking…" she said, as her face turned red enough to rival Sunset's hair. "Then the answer is yes."
It took a moment for Sunset's brain to process that. "Really?"
Twilight attempted to collect herself, and her cheeks regained some of their usual colour. "Well… apart from my brother and Spike, I may be pretty new to actually having friends, let alone…" — her blush returned in full force — "Dating, but I think… I would like to try it." She looked at Sunset. "With you."
Sunset smiled softly. She offered her hand to Twilight, who took it. She then closed the distance between them, and gave Twilight a small peck on the cheek. For a moment, they stood there together in a comfortable silence.
Then, Twilight brought her free hand up to her mouth, yawning.
This caused Sunset to yawn, too. "Guess we'd better head to sleep, huh?"
"It is getting pretty late. Plus, we can share the good news with everyone. Er, no math pun intended this time."
Still holding hands, the two girls climbed upstairs, and went to open the bedroom door — only for Sunset to immediately get smacked in the face by a pillow that Rainbow Dash had tried to throw at Pinkie Pie.
Inside the room, Rainbow, Pinkie, and Applejack were engaged in a furious pillow fight. Spike, too small to throw pillows around, was spectating eagerly and cheering everyone on. Fluttershy, somehow, was asleep despite the ruckus.
Sunset slowly picked up the pillow that had hit her.
She and Twilight turned to look at each other and grinned.
Then, with a dual battle cry, they charged into the room, joining the brawl.
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I hate getting hit with pi. It never ends.
http://www.scientificcomputing.com/blog/2015/06/are-you-tau-ist-pi-day-under-attack
Ok this is real wtf.....
orig00.deviantart.net/fe86/f/2014/213/f/1/droppingthefrog_by_kayfedewa-d7t8q9f.gif
Nerds in love
i'm glad there wasn't too much math in this, i mean i'm only in algebra 2...
Ahh, you missed the obvious joke! Just one line, that's all it would take to have Fluttershy say, "Girls! Would you two please taun it down?"
When I saw this story in my feed I was expecting something to do with Warhammer, But, I learned something new today instead, so that's a bonus.
I'm...confused.
Entertained, yes, but confused. It's a fun story...but I have no idea what they were talking about. Though that may have been intentional.
7345675
Well, the author has pi on his face now.
Its arbitrary, I'd say, like most of the ships one can find.
I like it.
I'm with Sunset on this.
Tau is so much more convenient than pi. Even on the most basic level if you replace diameter x pi with radius x tau the equation for area of a circle becomes 1/2 x tau x radius^2 which is the perfect picture of the most basic integral imaginable. It gives clean clear cut examples of how we use advanced math without even realizing it when learning the lower levels.
A tad confusing but amusing.
7346383
Pi is right.
7347643
That is a lot of math I either forgot or never learned because of how advanced it is -- which kind of settles the point in my mind really. There's always going to be a place for pi. It's too big to ever concivably remove from math. It would be stupid to do so, but that doesn't mean ignoring the benefits of tau though. Like Sunset said it would be best to phase it in because it does clear things up. If anything, I find the claim to have less constants being better absurd. The Pi Manifesto claims tauists are singling out tau but that's just how these things work. It pointed out quite nicely there's significance to pi/2 and pi/4. There's no reason those ratios might not deserve their own constant too. It depends on the how and the why and the how often they're used. I mean, the majority of people think of pi as just 3.14. They don't appreciate the magnitude of pi. It's just a constant they sometimes use, and that is by far the biggest reason for tau. It's a label --- something practical for people who don't necessarily have the pure devotion to math that a mathematician would.
Well,they hurt my brain. I admit, I am bad at maths. I'd half forgotten what Pi even was and I've never heard of Tau in mathematical terms in my life.
"We just had a stupid argument."
"Let's date!"
"Okay!"
Good logic
The amount of happy I experienced just reading the title is impossible to describe. Now to read the story.
7347861 So you're RD in this story.
Sound about right or am I the only one.
7348678 Yeah pretty much, I'm usually more the "Twilight" one buuut when it comes to maths... not so much
Tau vult
Heretical Tau scum should burn in the holy anger of the God Emperor
7347861 I wasn't aware Pi vs. Tau was even a thing in the first place. When I searched for what exactly Tau was, I remembered we used it a lot more than Pi back in my high school, but that doesn't mean I understand it more than I do Pi. I suck at math, unfortunately.
7345501 I finished high school and I still have no idea what they're talking about, so no worries there.
Plot twist: the equestrian universe is made out of stable Tau matter.
Speaking as someone who uses algebraic forms in daily life for their day job and dabbles in geometry for fun and whose 8-year old daughter likes to play around with number sets, I have the following to say:
The whole agreement is reeeeeeeeeeeealy stupid.
Given that most people on the planet have trouble balancing their checkbook, which by its nature only operates on real numbers, just introducing variables into things is too complex, let alone imaginary or irrational numbers. Just for people to wrap their heads around the base concepts that make understanding something as simple as pi or tau requires so much effort that's outside their wheelhouse that you can forget about getting then to understand why either might be useful.
In the end they're both means by which you can come to the same conclusion. Sure, one might be more "elegant" while the other is more "classical," but at the end of the day, while mathematicians are busy getting into fistfights over nebulous numeric constructs, the rest of the world is busy having a life.
On the other hand, I will CUT you if you call "maths" instead of "math."
Tau Empire.
For the Greater Good.
I don't plan to read this, but I have to say, Pi is definitely the right one.
e^iPi + 1 = 0
It just gets more messy if you try and use Tau. Absolute proof Pi is the better of the two.
7361297 e^iTau=1
or if you really want to keep 0 in it:
e^iTau - 1 = 0
7364264 Okay, but then you are throwing away one of the awesome things about Euler's Identity. That it contains 1 in it.
e, i, pi, 1, 0
Five of the most spectacular constants in nature. You would replace 1 with -1, which is not nearly so nice.
WARNING: There be mathing down below!
This is the nerdiest shipfic I've ever read, and that's actually a category with some competition.
Taught me something, though!
Sunset and Twilight argue about nerd stuff.
Exposition bit in the middle could've been handled a bit better - such as having Twi and Sunset try to rope RD to their side. Works it into the narrative better than just Spike explaining it all on the sidelines.
This made me chuckle. Good job.
I'm personally fond of phi.
I side with Twilight. Mainly because I've gotten into a couple tau vs pi fights, and no one's been able to convince me that using the larger value is ever better!
This was sweet and so very hilarious. A fantastic story.
I wonder what their opinions on base 10 vs base 12 are? XD
I never heard of tau, so I'll have to look into it now. I really didn't quite get it, even though Spike explained it. But this was still a fun read regardless!
8375208
I honestly don't know what the advantage to base 10 is beyond 'it's working well enough' and 'it's what we've always used, so it would be a pain to switch to base 12'. Base 12 can do everything base 10 can and more. Also, base 10 isn't as universal as people treat it; so, I can't see any good reason to stick to that system as a society.
I actually favor using -1 in Euler's identity, because while it's beautiful enough as a Platonic ideal, I feel the best way to teach Euler's identity is to show its derivation, which helps make the "ontogeny recapitulates phylogeny"-ish point about how much both developments in humanity's manipulation of numbers (the zero, negative numbers, irrational numbers, imaginary numbers...) and how much all the initially separate stuff we give students in math classes (arithmetic, ruler-and-compass geometry, basic algebra, trigonometry with calculators and identity memorization, integral calculus and deriving rather than defining pi, infinite series summation, replacement of the initial definition of logarithms with one based on integration and deriving rather than defining e, the hyperbolic functions...) finally come together as Euler's identity shows how both everything humanity and the student have studied has been just different views through a kaleidoscope on a very small set of relationship patterns. And using -1 seems to make the process just a bit more beautiful. (Note: this is a very small point on semantics, and I'll drop it unless we really want to recapture the spirit of this story in the comment section... on that note, below.)
Don't actually have an opinion on tau versus pi, but this story does a great job at capturing how that kind of argument goes: on the one hand really that freaking vehement because semantics (once the entire subject matter is the ability to clearly envision and communicate something there's nothing more important to be arguing about), on the other hand it looks way scarier for people on the outside (who aren't used to this) than it actually is because the parties involved know going into this they're not actually going to do more than gloriously argue right then and this isn't the kind of argument which actually affects friendships. While the romance angle's canonically optional this is otherwise the exact sort of thing which should happen at least once as soon as Sunset and Twilight are friends and regularly interacting.
I think Spike is a better source for exposition because he helps keep the others out of it: RD would either consider the whole thing utterly stupid and be trying to shut it down early or (if explained to her with just the wrong analogy, like which sports team is more fun for non-fans to watch play) could start a cycle of escalations which could actually shut down the slumber party, and Spike provides the most common extra perspective when this happens in a college center. There's usually somebody who understands what's going on, that it isn't going to end in a knife fight, and does the explaining. The people involved don't usually try to rope in extra people to test the "explanatory value" of their sides because the sample size is too small and the argument's more fun that resolving it anyway.
I'm sorry, but tau is what I use to symbolize torque. Lowercase pi is only used for that ratio.
One of the most adorably nerdy things I've ever read, and that's saying something. Thank you for it.
Well this didn't go according to plan.
Ok, now that explains why they're arguing.
Wow, didn't expected to hear that from fluttershy of all people.
Me neither and agreed.
Well looks like things worked out in the end, and the same with this story too.
I wonder how and where Sunset learned so much on tau. She doesn't seem to be the nerd type.
Can relate to yelling at a friend over math though. In tenth grade I had an overly passionate feud with a classmate over whether rational expressions are better than functions. It stopped after our math teacher introduced us to geometric series via rational function based on the wonderful children's book The Cat in the Hat Comes Back.
The biggest argument for tau seems to be that all our circle related equations use the radius as a variable rather than diameter, and tau is radius-based.
Now I'm wondering why we use radians, not diametrans.
Why is it the radius of the unit circle that's equal to 1, not the diameter?
Perhaps in a universe with diameter-based circle-related equations, the conventional tau is being challenged by upstart pi...
NOT TWI BRINGING UP SUNSET MISCALCULATING IN THE FRIENDSHIP GAMES >:O