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A review by tiffanywang29
How to Bake Pi: An Edible Exploration of the Mathematics of Mathematics by Eugenia Cheng
3.0
I wanted to read this book because I don't understand why math is a thing. Trust me-I totally get the "practical application" problems that teachers try to give us, but honestly, is designing a wedding bell and trying to figure out its area using integrals really going to be a thing in my life? Sorry, it's not getting to me. And sadly, after reading the book, I'm no closer to understanding why math makes sense. Cheng argues that the whole point of math is to make complicated things simpler. As much as I understood (or tried to understand) her argument, I still don't get it. You can tell how enamored she is with math, her excitement is literally pouring out of the pages, but it flies all over my head. I will be honest, especially towards the end, I was skimming skimming skimming, hoping that the book was over soon.
Cheng tries to compare real-life scenarios such as cooking, driving, and dinner party conversations to certain principles in math. The real-life scenarios made sense, and to a certain extent, the math comparison made sense, but the second Cheng started talking about purely the math part, she lost me. I like to think of myself as a fairly educated person, and that I'm fairly good at math, but wow the entire second half of the book dealing with category theory was totally lost on me. I don't think it was her fault, but I did not understand it whatsoever. That half of the book could have been summed up as "category theory is trying to make math simpler," because that is literally the only thing I understood in the entire section. I think it does indeed have something to do with putting things in groups, sets, categories, etc, but other than that, I got nothing.
Another problem I had was the fact that Cheng actually made me MORE disillusioned with math by trying to dispel common misperceptions. She argues that many people hate math because it only has one answer, and proves that that's wrong by saying that 1+1 can equal 2, 0, or something else based on what number system you use. Great, but this makes math even more complicated (and in my opinion, more useless). 1+1 only equals zero if we use a two hour clock and why the heck would we use a two hour clock?!?!
I think the fact that I didn't like this book stems from the fact that I wanted to understand WHY math exists, but, as Cheng outlines at the end of the book, it's impossible to get to the pure why, and that it is more important to just be illuminated and educated about the subject. So, to those math-haters out there, this book won't get you to like, or even understand math, but it has some interesting recipes.
Cheng tries to compare real-life scenarios such as cooking, driving, and dinner party conversations to certain principles in math. The real-life scenarios made sense, and to a certain extent, the math comparison made sense, but the second Cheng started talking about purely the math part, she lost me. I like to think of myself as a fairly educated person, and that I'm fairly good at math, but wow the entire second half of the book dealing with category theory was totally lost on me. I don't think it was her fault, but I did not understand it whatsoever. That half of the book could have been summed up as "category theory is trying to make math simpler," because that is literally the only thing I understood in the entire section. I think it does indeed have something to do with putting things in groups, sets, categories, etc, but other than that, I got nothing.
Another problem I had was the fact that Cheng actually made me MORE disillusioned with math by trying to dispel common misperceptions. She argues that many people hate math because it only has one answer, and proves that that's wrong by saying that 1+1 can equal 2, 0, or something else based on what number system you use. Great, but this makes math even more complicated (and in my opinion, more useless). 1+1 only equals zero if we use a two hour clock and why the heck would we use a two hour clock?!?!
I think the fact that I didn't like this book stems from the fact that I wanted to understand WHY math exists, but, as Cheng outlines at the end of the book, it's impossible to get to the pure why, and that it is more important to just be illuminated and educated about the subject. So, to those math-haters out there, this book won't get you to like, or even understand math, but it has some interesting recipes.