• Complain

Eugenia Cheng - How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics

Here you can read online Eugenia Cheng - How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics full text of the book (entire story) in english for free. Download pdf and epub, get meaning, cover and reviews about this ebook. year: 2015, publisher: Basic Books, genre: Children. Description of the work, (preface) as well as reviews are available. Best literature library LitArk.com created for fans of good reading and offers a wide selection of genres:

Romance novel Science fiction Adventure Detective Science History Home and family Prose Art Politics Computer Non-fiction Religion Business Children Humor

Choose a favorite category and find really read worthwhile books. Enjoy immersion in the world of imagination, feel the emotions of the characters or learn something new for yourself, make an fascinating discovery.

No cover
  • Book:
    How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics
  • Author:
  • Publisher:
    Basic Books
  • Genre:
  • Year:
    2015
  • Rating:
    5 / 5
  • Favourites:
    Add to favourites
  • Your mark:
    • 100
    • 1
    • 2
    • 3
    • 4
    • 5

How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics: summary, description and annotation

We offer to read an annotation, description, summary or preface (depends on what the author of the book "How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics" wrote himself). If you haven't found the necessary information about the book — write in the comments, we will try to find it.

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 about cooking; well also run the New York and Chicago marathons, take a closer look at St. Pauls Cathedral, pay visits to Cinderella and Lewis Carroll, and even get to the bottom of why we think of a tomato as a vegetable. At the heart of it all is Chengs work on category theory, a cutting-edge mathematics of mathematics, that is about figuring out how math works. This is not the math of our high school classes: seen through category theory, mathematics becomes less about numbers and formulas and more about how we know, believe, and understand anything, including whether our brother took too much cake.
Many of us think that math is hard, but, as Cheng makes clear, math is actually designed to make difficult things easier. Combined with her infectious enthusiasm for cooking and a true zest for life, Chengs perspective on math becomes this singular book: a funny, lively, and clear journey through a vast territory no popular book on math has explored before. How to Bake Pi offers a whole new way to think about a field all of us think we know; it will both dazzle the constant reader of popular mathematics and amuse and enlighten even the most hardened math-phobe.
So, what is math? Lets look for the answer in the kitchen.

Eugenia Cheng: author's other books


Who wrote How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics? Find out the surname, the name of the author of the book and a list of all author's works by series.

How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics — read online for free the complete book (whole text) full work

Below is the text of the book, divided by pages. System saving the place of the last page read, allows you to conveniently read the book "How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics" online for free, without having to search again every time where you left off. Put a bookmark, and you can go to the page where you finished reading at any time.

Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Copyright 2015 by Eugenia Cheng Published by Basic Books A Member of the - photo 1

Copyright 2015 by Eugenia Cheng Published by Basic Books A Member of the - photo 2

Copyright 2015 by Eugenia Cheng

Published by Basic Books,

A Member of the Perseus Books Group

All rights reserved. Printed in the United States of America. No part of this book may be reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information, address Basic Books, 250 West 57th Street, New York, NY 10107.

Books published by Basic Books are available at special discounts for bulk purchases in the United States by corporations, institutions, and other organizations. For more information, please contact the Special Markets Department at the Perseus Books Group, 2300 Chestnut Street, Suite 200, Philadelphia, PA 19103, or call (800) 8104145, ext. 5000, or e-mail .

A catalog record for this book is available from the Library of Congress.

Library of Congress Control Number: 2014957937

ISBN: 978-0-465-05169-4 (e-book)

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

To my parents and Martin Hyland

In memory of Christine Pembridge

Contents

They say mathematics is a glorious garden. I know I would certainly lose my way in it without your guidance. Thank you for walking us through the most beautiful entrance pathway.

From a students letter to the author

University of Chicago, June 2014

Here is a recipe for clotted cream.


Ingredients

Cream

Method

1. Pour the cream into a rice cooker.

2. Leave it on the keep warm setting with the lid slightly open, for about 8 hours.

3. Cool it in the fridge for about 8 hours.

4. Scoop the top part off: thats the clotted cream.


What on earth does this have to do with math?

Math Myths

Myth: Math is all about numbers.

You might think that rice cookers are for cooking rice. This is true, but the same piece of equipment can be used for other things as well: making clotted cream, cooking vegetables, steaming a chicken. Likewise, math is about numbers, but its about many other things as well.

Myth: Math is all about getting the right answer.

Cooking is about ways of putting ingredients together to make delicious food. Sometimes its more about the method than the ingredients, just as in the recipe for clotted cream, which only has one ingredientthe entire recipe is just a method. Math is about ways of putting ideas together to make exciting new ideas. And sometimes its more about the method than the ingredients.

Myth: Math is all either right or wrong.

Cooking can go wrongyour eggs can curdle, your souffl can collapse, your chicken can be undercooked and give everyone food poisoning. But even if it doesnt poison you, some food tastes better than other food. And sometimes when cooking goes wrong you have actually accidentally invented a delicious new recipe. Fallen chocolate souffl is deliciously dark and gooey. If you forget to melt the chocolate for your cookies, you get chocolate chip cookies. Math is like this too. In high school if you write 10 + 4 = 2 you will be told that is wrong, but actually thats correct in some circumstances, such as telling the timefour hours later than 10:00 is indeed 2:00. The world of math is more weird and wonderful than some people want to tell you.

Myth: Youre a mathematician? You must be really clever.

Much as I like the idea that I am very clever, this popular myth shows that people think math is hard. The little-understood truth is that the aim of math is to make things easier. Herein lies the problemif you need to make things easier, it gives the impression that they were hard in the first place. Math is hard, but it makes hard things easier. In fact, since math is a hard thing, math also makes math easier.

Many people are afraid of math, or baffled by it, or both. Or they were completely turned off it by their classes in high school. I understand thisI was completely turned off sports in high school and have never really recovered. I was so bad at sports in high school, my teachers were incredulous that anybody so bad at sports could exist. And yet Im quite fit now and have even run the New York City Marathon. At least I now appreciate physical exercise, but I still have a horror of any kind of team sports.

Myth: How can you do research in math? You cant just discover a new number.

This book is my answer to that question. Its hard to answer it quickly at a cocktail party without sounding trite, or taking up too much of someones time, or shocking the gathered company. Yes, one way to shock people at a polite party is to talk about math.

Its true, you cant just discover a new number. So what can we discover thats new in math? In order to explain what this new math could possibly be about, I need to clear up some misunderstandings about what math is in the first place. Indeed, not only is math not just about numbers, but the branch of math Im going to describe is actually not about numbers at all. Its called

CATEGORY THEORY

and it can be thought of as the mathematics of mathematics. Its about relationships, contexts, processes, principles, structures, cakes, custard.

Yes, even custard. Because mathematics is about drawing analogies, and Im going to be drawing analogies with all sorts of things to explain how math works, including custard, cake, pie, pastry, donuts, bagels, mayonnaise, yogurt, lasagne, sushi.

Whatever you think math is... let go of it now. This is going to be different.


Gluten-Free Chocolate Brownies

Ingredients

4 oz. butter

5 oz. dark chocolate

2 medium eggs

6 oz. sugar

3 oz. potato flour

Method

1. Melt the butter and chocolate, stir together, and allow to cool a little.

2. Whisk the eggs and the sugar together until fluffy.

3. Beat the chocolate into the egg mixture slowly.

4. Fold in the potato flour.

5. Bake in very small individual cupcake liners at 350F for about 10 minutes.


Math, like recipes, has both ingredients and method. And just as a recipe would be a bit useless if it omitted the method, we cant understand what math is unless we talk about the way it is done, not just the things it studies. Incidentally the method in the above recipe is quite importantthese dont cook very well in a large tray. In math the method is perhaps even more important than the ingredients. Math probably isnt whatever you studied in high school in classes called math. Yet somehow I always knew that math was more than what we did in high school. So what

Next page
Light

Font size:

Reset

Interval:

Bookmark:

Make

Similar books «How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics»

Look at similar books to How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics. We have selected literature similar in name and meaning in the hope of providing readers with more options to find new, interesting, not yet read works.


Reviews about «How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics»

Discussion, reviews of the book How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics and just readers' own opinions. Leave your comments, write what you think about the work, its meaning or the main characters. Specify what exactly you liked and what you didn't like, and why you think so.