Eugenia Cheng, author of How to Bake Pi, on Colbert Tonight

Earlier this year, I read Eugenia Cheng’s brilliant book How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics. Tonight she’s appearing (along with Daniel Craig apparently) on the The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. I encourage everyone to watch it and read her book when they get the chance.

How-to-bake-pi

You can also read more about her appearance from Category Theorist John Carlos Baez here: Cakes, Custard, Categories and Colbert | The n-Category Café

My brief review of her book on GoodReads.com:

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

While most of the book is material I’ve known for a long time, it’s very well structured and presented in a clean and clear manner. Though a small portion is about category theory and gives some of the “flavor” of the subject, the majority is about how abstract mathematics works in general.

I’d recommend this to anyone who wants to have a clear picture of what mathematics really is or how it should be properly thought about and practiced (hint: it’s not the pablum you memorized in high school or even in calculus or linear algebra). Many books talk about the beauty of math, while this one actually makes steps towards actually showing the reader how to appreciate that beauty.

Like many popular books about math, this one actually has very little that goes beyond the 5th grade level, but in examples that are very helpfully illuminating given their elementary nature. The extended food metaphors and recipes throughout the book fit in wonderfully with the abstract nature of math – perhaps this is why I love cooking so much myself.

I wish I’d read this book in high school to have a better picture of the forest of mathematics.

More thoughts to come…

I’m a sucker for references to math and pastry

W

hat can I say? I’m a sucker for references to math and pastry.

 

“One of the wonderful features of math is that, like with pastry, it can use quite simple ingredients to make very complicated situations. This can also make it rather offputting, like making puff pastry. Actually, I don’t think puff pastry is that difficult if you follow the instructions carefully. But even if you don’t want to try doing it yourself, perhaps you can still enjoy the fact that such simple ingredients can turn into delicious puff pastry. Math is about understanding processes and not just eating end results.”

Eugenia Cheng, mathematician, amateur chef
in How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics (Basic Books, 2015)
 

How to Bake Pi
How to Bake Pi

How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics | Category Theory

For those who are intimidated by the thought of higher mathematics, but are still considering joining our Category Theory Summer Study Group, I’ve just come across a lovely new book by Eugenia Cheng entitled How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics.

Eugenia Cheng's book How to Bake Pi
Eugenia Cheng’s book How to Bake Pi

It just came out in the U.S. market on May 5, 2015, so it’s very new in the market. My guess is that even those who aren’t intimidated will get a lot out of it as well. A brief description of the book follows:

“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 béchamel 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, it’s not all cooking; we’ll also run the New York and Chicago marathons, pay visits to Cinderella and Lewis Carroll, and even get to the bottom of a tomato’s 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 Cheng’s work on category theory—a 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.”

Dr. Cheng recently appeared on NPR’s Science Friday with Ira Flatow to discuss her book.  You can listen to the interview below. Most of the interview is about her new book. Specific discussion of category theory begins about 14 minutes into the conversation.

Eugenia Cheng, mathematician
Eugenia Cheng, mathematician

Dr. Eugenia Cheng can be followed on Twitter @DrEugeniaCheng. References to her new book as well as some of her syllabi and writings on category theory have been added to our Category Theory resources pages for download/reading.