This is both an entertaining and interesting book on math. It's mostly well-written in the first person by the author, who uses cooking and recipes as a metaphor for math. The metaphor mostly works, although to get it, you probably need to know the basics of cooking. She also uses some other metaphors even more effectively. It explores math concepts one chapter at time, but the author can't help but introduce some later concepts in her earlier chapters. Her discussion of abstract thinking early in the book is outstanding. I have one quibble, which is that it's not very well edited. There are a couple of grammatical errors and some editing errors that are surprising for a book on math, which generally has a certain precision to it. (But not always, as the author points out.)
"Whimsical...rigorous and insightful." -- New York Times Book Review
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 how the béchamel in a lasagna can be a lot like the number five, and why making a good custard proves that math is easy but life is hard. At the heart of it all is Cheng's work on category theory, a cutting-edge "mathematics of mathematics," that is about figuring out how math works.
Combined with her infectious enthusiasm for cooking and true zest for life, Cheng's perspective on math is a funny journey through a vast territory no popular book on math has explored before. So, what is math? Let's look for the answer in the kitchen.
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