How to Bake Pi - Book Review

The book I chose to read for MTH495 was How to Bake Pi, by Eugenia Cheng. I chose this book, mainly because I love to cook and I felt that this book would make a lot of realistic life connections between math and cooking. This book was very easy to read, because it was broken up very nicely by topics and concepts and each chapter began with a recipe that was relevant to what would be covered in that chapter.

I really enjoyed this book, but if I were to review it honestly, I wish that the coverage on some concepts was a little bit more detailed. There were some topics that were talked about several times throughout the book, and multiple examples were given. However, on some topics that I wasn't as familiar with, I felt as though the author didn't touch on them as heavily. I would have preferred a more consistent coverage of topics throughout the book, but the way it was written was still very fun to read.

I think that having read this book, I am now more prepared to be an educator since this book breaks down concepts that were once abstract thoughts to me and put them into Lehman's terms. I had moments while reading this book where I wished that I had been taught things I have learned in my previous classes in the way that Cheng described them.

I would recommend this book to anyone looking to make humorous connections between the real world and mathematics. This book was funny but was constantly relating it back to a math concept. I would encourage people to read this book, but take the time to digest the concepts discussed and really make sure they understand one before moving to another.