Book Review: How to Bake Pi

How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics by Eugenia Cheng
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

How to Bake Pi by Eugenia Cheng is a fascinating look at mathematics from an atypical perspective. In this work Eugenia shows how math is far larger, varied, and more encompassing than merely solving equations. She introduces each of her chapters with a "recipe" involving real food as an analogy to illustrate the points she makes.

In the early part of the book Eugenia describes how many people find math difficult and drop away at different stages. For some, arithmetic is hard. For other algebra or geometry is where they drop away. For some it might be trigonometry. For others calculus. And so on.

In my own personal experience, I found that I could not get past the plateau of calculus. This book finally gave me insight into why: up to calculus, math was still primarily about solving problems/equations and finding the "right" answer. Starting with calculus and going further into advance mathematics, problem-solving and finding the "right" answer is no longer the goal. My belief was that math was about solving problems, and so calculus increasingly made little sense in my mind. Perhaps if I had known what this book describes about math, I may have had a chance to get past the wall of calculus.

The first part of the book discusses abstractions and generalizations as one of the key goals of math. The second part of the book discusses Eugenia's field of specialty: Category Theory, and how the purpose of this meta-math (or math of math) is to simply math.

The final chapter brings all the earlier pages together as Eugenia summarizes the knowledge and makes a case to have her readers come away with the belief that math isn't hard. She does so by applying in her literary work the principles she discusses in this very chapter: she uses her discussions to bridge the knowledge and belief through understanding. So in the end I find that her math "principles" apply to not just math, but to cooking and to writing.

What is contained in this book is probably of most interest to someone familiar with high school math and onward. Many of the examples given assume a basic knowledge of algebra and geometry.

Eugenia alludes to math education a number of times in her book. Although this is not a book about math education, I believe that the reader can discover a vision for math education that she would like her readers to leave with. I think that this book will be an interesting and helpful volume for aspiring teachers and math educators, from elementary through high school and even into higher ed.

(This review is based on ARC supplied by the publisher through NetGalley.)

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