How to Bake Pi by Eugenia Cheng

Author:Eugenia Cheng [Cheng, Eugenia]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780465051694
Publisher: Basic Books

Now, in this case you might well have been able to do it without explicitly using simultaneous equations. But what about this problem—can you do this one in your head?

A rope over the top of a fence has the same length on each side, and weighs one-third of a pound per foot. On one end hangs a monkey holding a banana, and on the other end a weight equal to the weight of the monkey. The banana weighs 2 ounces per inch. The length of the rope in feet is the same as the age of the monkey, and the weight of the monkey in ounces is as much as the age of the monkey’s mother. The combined age of the monkey and its mother is 30 years. Half the weight of the monkey plus the weight of the banana is a quarter the sum of the weights of the rope and the weight. The monkey’s mother is half as old as the monkey will be when it’s three times as old as its mother was when she was half as old as the monkey will be when it’s as old as its mother will be when she’s four times as old as the monkey was when it was twice as old as its mother was when she was a third as old as the monkey was when it was as old as its mother was when she was three times as old as the monkey was when it was a quarter as old as it is now. How long is the banana?

4.I am very happy. How will I feel if I go bungee-jumping? This has far too much ambiguity. So what does mathematics do with it? It ignores it. (Which makes it much easier.)

5.We want to understand how playing snooker works. First we imagine that everything is perfectly spherical, perfectly smooth, and perfectly rigid. We might think about relevant details like friction, bounciness, spin, and so on later. We can ignore irrelevant details like color. Except color is not irrelevant in practice; but the added pressure of trying to pot the black to win is not a question that mathematics can deal with.

This is the crucial point: we make things easy by ignoring the things that are hard. Mathematics is all the parts we don’t have to throw away. The easy bits.

If Math Is Easy, Why Is It Hard?

You might be wanting to point out a flaw in my argument already: if math is easy, why does anyone find it hard? There are as many ways to make things difficult as there are to make them easy, and we can be sure that a whole ton of them have been applied to mathematics.

If someone finds math hard it might also be because nobody told them what it was for. A fork is rather hard to use as a knife. It’s also rather hard to use if you’re trying to eat a sandwich. Or a bowl of soup. Or a bag of popcorn.

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