"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 bechamel 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."--Publisher description.

"An engaging and imaginative tour through the fundamental mathematical concepts-from arithmetic to infinity-that form the building blocks of our universe. Our universe has multiple origin stories, from religious creation myths to the Big Bang of scientists. But if we leave those behind and start from nothing-no matter, no cosmos, not even empty space-could we create a universe using only math? Irreverent, richly illustrated, and boundlessly creative,...

Inspired by a question about the Fibonacci numbers, probe the power of graphs. First, experiment with scatter plots. Then see how plotting data is like graphing functions in algebra. Use graphs to prove the fixed-point theorem and answer the Fibonacci question that opened the lecture.

Delve into decision trees, which are graphs that use a branching method to determine all possible outcomes of a decision. Trees for continuous outcomes are called regression trees, while those for categorical outcomes are called classification trees. Learn how and when to use each, producing inferences that are easily understood by non-statisticians.

Negative numbers are often confusing, especially negative parenthetical expressions in algebra problems. Discover a simple visual model that makes it easy to keep track of what's negative and what's not, allowing you to tackle long strings of negatives and positives--with parentheses galore.

Many puzzles are optimization problems in disguise. Discover that nature often reveals shortcuts to the solutions. See how light, bubbles, balloons, and other phenomena provide powerful hints to these conundrums. Close with the surprising answer to the Kakeya needle problem to determine the space required to turn a needle completely around.

Turn to an entirely different approach for doing statistical inference: Bayesian statistics, which assumes a known prior probability and updates the probability based on the accumulation of additional data. Unlike the frequentist approach, the Bayesian method does not depend on an infinite number of hypothetical repetitions. Explore the flexibility of Bayesian analysis.

We say that pi is 3.14159 … but what is pi really? Why does it matter? And what does it have to do with the area of a circle? Explore the answer to these questions and more—including how to define pi for shapes other than circles (such as squares).

Arguably the most important area of mathematics, algebra introduces the powerful idea of using an abstract variable to represent an unknown quantity. This lecture demonstrates algebra's golden rule: Do unto one side of an equation as you do unto the other.

Much of what you've learned about linear and quadratic expressions applies to adding, subtracting, multiplying, and dividing polynomials. Discover how the FOIL operation can be extended to multiplying large polynomials, and a version of long division works for dividing one polynomial by another.