num_pages: 304
description: What is math? How exactly does it work? And what do three siblings trying to share a cake have to do with it? In How to Bake Pi math professor Eugenia Cheng provides an accessible introduction to the logic and beauty of mathematics powered unexpectedly by insights from the kitchen: we learn for example how the bchamel in a lasagna can be a lot like the number 5 and why making a good custard proves that math is easy but life is hard. Of course its not all cooking; well also run the New York and Chicago marathons pay visits to Cinderella and Lewis Carroll and even get to the bottom of a tomatos identity as a vegetable. This is not the math of our high school classes: mathematics Cheng shows us is less about numbers and formulas and more about how we know believe and understand anything including whether our brother took too much cake.At the heart of How to Bake Pi is Chengs work on category theorya cutting-edge mathematics of mathematics. Cheng combines her theory work with her enthusiasm for cooking both to shed new light on the fundamentals of mathematics and to give readers a tour of a vast territory no popular book on math has explored before. Lively funny and clear How to Bake Pi will dazzle the initiated while amusing and enlightening even the most hardened math-phobe.
language: English
title: How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics
publisher: Basic Books