Of course here, I am not referring to constants that are objectively wrong, but rather to constants given a value that in the end is somewhat counterintuitive or a second-best fit somehow.
Probably the most commonly cited example of this is the sign of electric charge as demonstrated by this xkcd strip: xkcd: Urgent Mission. For those who don’t know, electrons are negatively charged, and protons are positively charged. This choice is totally arbitrary, and because it has turned out that the electrons govern chemical behavior in reactions and whatnot much more than protons, it would be helpful to have chosen the opposite convention in order to avoid having to deal with so many negative signs.
Also, according to the Tau Manifesto (http://tauday.com/), pi is half of a better value. Having pi be the ratio of the circumference of a circle to its diameter is a second-best choice here, since mathematically, the radius is much more important. Thus statements like A = πr[SUP]2[/SUP] (the formula for the area of a circle) are kind of strange since the pi-part references the diameter but in combination with the radius. The current value of pi also seems to prevent an intuitive understanding of the unit circle.
Anyway, my questions to you are: Are there other constants that would seem to be a bit more elegant if they were replaced with something similar? And if so, what are they?