How to Bake Pi: Easy recipes for understanding complex maths

Description

Mobius bagels, Euclid's flourless chocolate cake and apple pi - this is maths, but not as you know it. In How to Bake Pi, mathematical crusader and star baker Eugenia Cheng has rustled up a batch of delicious culinary insights into everything from simple numeracy to category theory ('the mathematics of mathematics'), via Fermat, Poincare and Riemann. Maths is much more than simultaneous equations and pr2 : it is an incredibly powerful tool for thinking about the world around us. And once you learn how to think mathematically, you'll never think about anything - cakes, custard, bagels or doughnuts; not to mention fruit crumble, kitchen clutter and Yorkshire puddings - the same way again. Stuffed with moreish puzzles and topped with a generous dusting of wit and charm, How to Bake Pi is a foolproof recipe for a mathematical feast.

Eugenia Cheng is Senior Lecturer in Pure Mathematics at the University of Sheffield. She was educated at the University of Cambridge and has done post-doctoral work at the Universities of Cambridge, Chicago and Nice. Since 2007 her YouTube lectures and videos have been viewed around 700,000 times to date. A concert pianist, she also speaks French, English and Cantonese, and her mission in life is to rid the world of maths phobia.

It would be wonderful if this book attracted a new audience to the field. And there's no better ambassador (or dinner-party host, I'd wager) than Eugenia Cheng. -- Alex Bellos * New York Times * Quirky recipes, personal anecdotes and a large dollop of equations are the key ingredients in this alternative guide to maths and the scientific process. You should find it as easy as cooking a pie. * Observer * A brilliant gourmet feast of what maths is really about -- Ian Stewart, author of * Professor Stewart's Incredible Numbers * A concert pianist, mathematician, polyglot and now YouTube star, Cheng has carved out quite a niche for herself demystifying maths through cake. It's a Beautiful-Mind-meets-Scott-Pilgrim kind of mission, and Cheng brings to it an ebullient enthusiasm that's infectious * Guardian * An entertaining introduction to the beauty of mathematics by drawing on insights from the kitchen * Times Educational Supplement * Cheng's own personality really shines through. By conversing with her audience as equals, readers will likely connect with her, which in turn brings down the barriers to the subject...For readers who have even a pinch of native interest, she has masterfully lowered the mental barriers to new vistas. The book makes almost no mathematical demands of the reader, and yet explains ideas around maths, throughout. It is so seamless and so painless, it is quite brilliant * Bookmunch * Deliciously lively...It is Cheng's delightful descriptions of her gastronomic adventures that bring the mathematics to life * Times Higher Education *